


^0m 











A SHORT HISTORY OF 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



DESIGNED PRIMARILY FOR USE 
IN SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES 



h\ 



WALTER C. BRONSON, A.M. 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN BROWN UNIVERSITY 



BOSTON, U.S.A. 
D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS 

1905 






.1 

MAR 2 3 1915 

Copyright, 1900, 
By D. C. heath & CO. 



VUQ^Uj^ 




TO • 
ELISHA BENJAMIN ANDREWS 

IN TOKEN OF ADMIRATION FOR 

THE MAN AND THE EDUCATOR 
^ijis %mt Book 

IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED 
BY THE AUTHOR 



/^^ 



PREPACK 

Although this book is intended primarily for use in 
the class-room, the attempt has been made to give it a 
literary atmosphere, in the conviction that text-books 
on Uterature should contribute directly to the student's 
culture as well as to his knowledge of facts. It is hoped, 
therefore, that the general reader may find the follow- 
ing pages not wholly uninteresting. A good deal of 
the matter, especially in the foot-notes and the appendix, 
should also give the book some value for purposes of 
reference ; to that end, definiteness and accuracy have 
been sought at no little labor ; but in such a mass of 
details errors are inevitable, and corrections will be 
welcomed. 

The judicious teacher will readily recognize that the 
parts dealing with minor authors and with whole periods 
whose interest is historical rather than literary, as well 
as the more critical matter upon the greater authors, 
should be passed over lightly or omitted altogether 
w^hen the class is immature. There is much to be 
said, however, in favor of requiring the older pupils in 
high schools and academies to devote some study to 
Colonial and Revolutionary Hterature, not only for its 
relation to the literature of the RepubHc, but also for the 
light it throws upon early American history and the life 



vi PREFACE. 

and character of our forefathers. Furthermore, the ex- 
tracts in the appendix will be found to contain much 
that is interesting as well as illustrative of the times ; and 
the very spirit of the age speaks in some of the uncon- 
sciously humorous title-pages given in the bibliography. 

Throughout the book the literature has been pre- 
sented in its relation to general conditions in America 
and to the literatures of England and the Continent of 
Europe, for only so can it be completely understood and 
its full significance perceived ; but the personality of the 
authors and the intrinsic qualities of their work have, it 
is hoped, received due attention. The division into 
periods is not meant to be insisted upon too strongly. 
But some dividing lines must be run for convenience and 
clearness in treating of so wide and diversified a field, 
and those adopted are perhaps liable to fewer objections 
than any others. They have, however, been transgressed 
freely where it was necessary to do so in order to avoid 
splitting the discussion of an author's work. In the case 
of writers with whom the reader is probably not familiar 
and never need be, the method is chiefly descriptive; 
elsewhere the book is intended to be merely a guide in 
reading and studying the Uterature itself. 

I wish to express my indebtedness, for inspiration and 
guidance and occasionally for information, to Professor 
Tyler's admirable history of the Colonial and Revolu- 
tionary literature. But it is due to the reader to add 
that even the earlier portions of this little work are based 
almost^/feholly upon a study of the literature at first hand. 
Any other method, indeed, would have been inexcusable 
in the case of one having access to such remarkable 
collections of Americana as the Harris Collection of 



PREFACE. vii 

American Poetry, in the library of Brown University, 
and the John Carter Brown Library in the city of Provi- 
dence. It has been my privilege to work from many 
rare first editions, and in a few instances to hit upon 
material not hitherto utiHzed, so far as I know, in books 
upon American literature. It may be fitting to say, fur- 
ther, that what is presented upon pages 79-90 embodies 
the results of a canvass of all the poetry published be- 
tween the years 1789 and 18 15 and contained in the 
Harris Collection. It is perhaps hardly necessary to add 
that the bibliography in the appendix has been made to 
a considerable extent from the original editions, and, 
where these were lacking, largely from Sabin's Biblio- 
theca Amef'icana ; that the lives of the greater authors 
and the lists of their works are derived from the larger 
biographies and bibliographies ; and that details about 
minor authors have been taken from standard books of 
reference. 

My special thanks are due to Mr. Harry L. Koop- 
man, librarian of Brown University, and to his assist- 
ants, for many courtesies ; to Mr. George P. Winship, 
librarian of the John Carter Brown Library, for the use 
of that collection ; to the authorities of the Rhode 
Island Historical Society for access to some rare publi- 
cations on their shelves ; to Mr. William E. Foster, 
librarian of the Providence Public Library, for special 
privileges ; and to Professor Alois Brandl, of the Univer- 
sity of BerHn, for securing me the use of the University 
and Royal Libraries in BerHn. To Dr. F. R. Lane of 
the Central High School, Washington, D.C., to Professor 
L. A. Sherman of the University of Nebraska, and to 
Mr. H. L. Boltwood, Principal of the Evanston High 



viii PREFACE. 

School, Illinois, I am indebted for sundry suggestions 
made while the book was going through the press ; but 
as their suggestions were not always adopted, they are 
in nowise responsible for the faults of the book. The 
faults are doubtless many. I can only hope that, in spite 
of them, the following pages may be of some real service 
in the study of the literature of my country. 

Berlin, December 29, 1899. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGES 

PREFACE v-viii 

INTRODUCTION 3-4 

FOREWORDS TO COLONIAL AND REVOLUTIONARY 

PERIODS 7-9 

COLONIAL PERIOD:— 10-42 

Literature in Virginia . 11-16 

Literature in New England 16-38 

Literature in the Other Colonies .... 38-42 

REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD:— 43-68 

General Conditions . 43-45 

Political Literature 45-51 

Histories, Letters, Essays, etc 51-55 

Benjamin Franklin 55-57 

Poetry and the Drama: 57-68 

Minor poets, 57-59; John Trumbull, 60-61; Timothy 
Dwight, 61-62; Joel Barlow, 62-63; Philip Freneau, 
63-65 ; Jonathan Odell, 66 ; dramas, 66-68. 
FOREWORDS TO PERIOD OF THE REPUBLIC . 71-72 

PERIOD OF THE REPUBLIC:— 73-290 

The Literature from 1789 to 1815: . . \ . 73-101 
General conditions, 73-78 ; orations, biographies, and 
essays, 78-79 ; poetry and the drama, 79-91 ; prose 
fiction and Charles Brockden Brown, 91-101. 
The Literature from 1815 to 1870: .... 101-278 

General Conditions 101-112 

New York Writers : 1 12-150 

General conditions, 112-113; minor authors, 113-116; 
Washington Irving, 116-126; James Fenimore 
Cooper, 126-136; William Cullen Bryant, 136-148; 
later minor authors, 148-150. 

Southern Writers : 150-170 

General conditions, 150-152; minor authors, 152-154, 
157-158; William Gilmore Simms, 154-157; Edgar 
Allan Poe, 158-170. 

ix 



X CONTENTS. 

PAGES 

New England Writers : 170-260 

Minor authors, 170-176; Henry Wadsworth Long- 
fellow, 177-191 ; transcendentalism, 191-195 ; Ralph 
Waldo Emerson, 195-209 ; minor transcendentalists, 
209-210 ; Henry David Thoreau, 210-213 1 Nathaniel 
Hawthorne, 213-227 ; John Greenleaf Whittier, 227- 
239; James Russell Lowell, 239-250; Oliver Wen- 
dell Holmes, 250-260. 

Writers of the Middle States : 260-273 

Minor authors, 260-262; Bayard Taylor, 262-265; 
Walt Whitman, 265-273. 

Humorists, orators, historians 273-278 

The Literature from 1870 to 1900: .... 278-289 
General Conditions and Tendencies .... 278-283 

Northern Writers 283-285 

Western Writers 285-287 

Southern Writers 287-289 

CONCLUSION 289-290 

APPENDIX 291-356 

A. Extracts from Colonial and Revolutionary 

Literature: . 293-322 

John Smith, 293; William Byrd, 294; WiUiam Brad- 
ford, 295 ; William Bradford and Edward Winslow, 
295; Madam Winthrop, 296; Thomas Hooker, 297; 
Nathaniel Ward, 298 ; Anne Bradstreet, 299 ; Michael 
Wigglesworth, 300 ; Cotton Mather, 301 ; Jonathan 
Edwards, 302 ; Samuel Sewall, 303 ; Madam Knight, 
305; Mary Rowlandson, 307; A Collection of Poems, 
^orj\ Joseph Green, 308; Thomas Godfrey, 309; 
Henry Laurens, 310; The Columbian Magazine, 311; 
The Providence Gazette^ 312; A Cure for the Spleen, 
313 ; J. Hector St. John Crevecoeur, 315 ; Songs and 
Ballads of the American Revolution, 316; John Trum- 
bull, 317; Timothy Dwight, 318; Joel Barlow, 319; 
Philip Freneau, 320 ; Henry H. Brackenridge, 321. 

B. Newspapers and Magazines — Colleges — The 

New England Primer 323-328 

C. Partial Bibliography of Colonial and Revo- 

lutionary Literature 329-341 

D. Reference List of Books and Articles . . 342-356 

INDEX .... o ., ... . 357 



HISTORY OF 
AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



INTRODUCTION. 

Men of the English race have occupied what is now 
the United States of America for nearly three centuries. 
In that time, aided by men of other races, they have done 
an immense and splendid work. They have increased 
from a few thousands to seventy millions ; subdued and 
settled a wilderness stretching from ocean to ocean ; 
estabhshed the greatest RepubHc in the world's history ; 
fought two great wars, one for national independence 
and one for national unity and the liberation of the 
slave ; developed a magnificent material civihzation ; 
covered a continent with churches, schools, and col- 
leges ; and made respectable beginnings in literature 
and the fine arts. 

Of this manifold activity the literary side only will be 
the subject of special study in the following pages. But 
it should be remembered that a nation's literature is 
closely related to the other sides of the national life and 
cannot be fully understood apart. For the first two cen- 
turies, indeed, our literature is chiefly valuable, not as 
art, but as history, as an expression of the spirit of the 
people and the times. Nor can its full significance be 
seen until we widen our view still more and recognize 
that American literature is one branch of the greater 
English literature, a part of the life of a great race as 
well as of a great nation. 

3 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

The history of American literature will, therefore, 
here be divided into periods corresponding to the 
great periods of American history : 

I. The Colonial Period, 1607-1765. 
11. The Revolutionary Period, i 765-1 789. 
III. The Period of the Republic, i 789-1900. 

In the first two periods the purely literary aspects of 
the subject-matter will, for the reason already mentioned, 
receive less attention ; in the last period the literature 
will be studied chiefly for its own sake, although its 
historical and social relations must not be forgotten; 
and from first to last there will be frequent occasion to 
note the influence exerted upon American writers by 
those of England and the other countries of Europe. 



THE COLONIAL AND REVOLU- 
TIONARY PERIODS. 



FOREWORDS. 

The development of American literature during the 
first two centuries presents a peculiar phenomenon. The 
literature is not that of a people slowly emerging from 
barbarism and creating their own civilization through the 
long toil of ages. On the contrary, it is the literature of a 
people already highly civilized, but transplanted to another 
continent, where they set up in the wilderness the institu- 
tions of the Old World, modifying them to meet changed 
conditions and taking on in time a somewhat new spirit, 
yet on the whole clinging tenaciously to the substance of the 
old, and imitating with the provincial's feeling of depend- 
ence the current life and fashions of the mother country. 
A colonial literature has the a dvantag e of inheriting the 
riches of an old civilization ; it has the disadvantage of 
crude surroundings and lack of originality7""^ch was 
the case with American literature for two hundred years. 

During the first three-fourths of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, the period when most of the English colonies in 
America were planted, England was the home of great 
men and of a great Hterature. Spenser had died as the 
old century went out, Shakspere and Bacon lived on into 
the new, and Milton was born one year after the settle- 
ment of Jamestown. The colonists were of the same stock 
which had just produced these and other hterary Titans ; 
but it would of course be folly to look for writers equally 
great in the forests of America. Settling a wilderness 
and laying the foundations of a state are of themselves 
tasks ample enough for the strongest. If Shakspere the 

7 



8 THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 

deer-stealer had fled to Virginia instead of to London, if 
Milton had been a dissenting parson in a little New Eng- 
land village, should we have had King Lear and Paradise 
Lost? Furthermore, it should be remembered that for 
a century and more the population of the colonies was 
comparatively small; and since geniuses are rare in 
every generation, it is no wonder that they were not 
numerous among the few hundred thousand inhabit- 
ants scattered along the Atlantic seaboard. It must be 
said, however, that not only the great hghts were absent 
from America, but the lesser ones as well, and that the 
general level of literary talent was low. Unfavorable 
environment accounts for this state of things in part ; the 
character of the colonists accounts for yet more. Among 
the early settlers of the South were many paupers, con- 
victs, and needy adventurers. In Virginia the leading 
colonists were indeed of the Cavalier class and in- 
herently capable of literary culture ; but there, as will 
soon be shown, the local conditions were peculiarly un- 
favorable for the creation of a literary atmosphere. 
And the Northern and Middle colonies were settled 
chiefly by practical, rehgious people, more intent upon 
their political rights and the salvation of their souls than 
upon the delights of belles-lettres. During the last quar- 
ter of the seventeenth century and the greater part of the 
eighteenth, literature in England itself was comparatively 
inferior, the splendid Elizabethan age of poetry and im- 
agination having given place to the " age of prose and 
reason." Yet the names of Dryden, Addison, Swift, Pope, 
Fielding, Gray, Goldsmith, Johnson, Gibbon, and Hume 
are in their own way great, and American literature for 
the same period has — with two exceptions — no names 



FOREWORDS. 9 

worthy of a place beside them. But this is not matter 
for surprise ; conditions in America, although improving, 
were still unfavorable. Along the frontier the contest 
with wild nature went on unceasingly; and within the 
area already settled, arose a new set of sinew-straining 
tasks — the development of commerce and industry, the 
wars with France for the possession of Canada, and the 
struggle for independence and national union. Further- 
more, from first to last the literature of the mother coun- 
try retarded the growth of a native literature by dimin- 
ishing the need of one ; our ancestors imported poetry, 
essays, and novels from England just as they imported 
fine fabrics and other luxuries. 

I Next to the inferiority of early American literature, 
the most conspicuous fact is its imitation of English 
models.J Throughout its whole course it runs parallel 
with literature in the mother country, although usually 
lagging about a generation behind. In America as 
in England, the heavy prose of the seventeenth cen- 
tury is succeeded by hghter and more orderly prose 
in the eighteenth. The ^' metaphysical " poetry of the 
Jacobean and Caroline periods is solemnly echoed 
from the rocky New England coast. The didactic and 
satiric verse of Dryden and Pope feathers the shaft of the 
American satirist in regions which not long before knew 
only the whiz of the Indian's arrow. The profitable 
pleasantries of Addison, the pensive moralizing of Gray, 
the genial grace of Goldsmith, the ponderous sesqui- 
pedahan tread of Johnson, the new Romanticism of 
Collins, Macpherson, and Walpole, the ^^ sensibility " of 
Mackenzie and Sterne, all find admirers and imitators in 
the colonial writers of verse and prose. 



I. THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 

(1607-I765.) 



EVENTS IN AMERICA. 



Settlement of Jamestown, 1607. 

Negro slavery introduced into Vir- 
ginia, 1619. 

Landing of Pilgrims at Plymouth, 
1620. 

New York settled by Dutch, 1621. 

Indian massacre in Virginia, 
1622. 

Founding of Massachusetts Bay 
Colony, 1630. 

Founding of Maryland, 1634. 

First settlement in Connecticut, 

1635. 
Founding of Providence, 1636. 
Pequot War, 1637. 
Delaware settled by Swedes, 1638. 



First settlement in North Carolina, 

1653. 

Persecution of Quakers, 1656-1661. 

English seize New York, 1664. 

Founding of Charleston, S.C., 1670. 

Bacon's Rebellion, 1676. 

King Philip's War, 1675-1678. 

Pennsylvania settled, 1682. 

Salem witchcraft, 1692. 

Wars in America between France 
(aided by Indians) and Eng- 
land : King William's War, 
1689-1697 ; Queen Anne's War, 
1702-1713; King George's Wai, 
1744-1748; French and Indian 
War, 1754-1763. 



EVENTS IN ENGLAND. 



Reign of James I., 1603-1625. 
Charles I. came to throne, 1625. 
Civil War, 1642-1646. 
Charles I. beheaded, 1649. 
England a commonwealth, 1649- 

1660. 
Restoration of monarchy, 1660. 



The Bloodless Revolution, 1688. 
William and Mary came to throne, 

1689. 
Reign of Anne, 1702-1714. 
Reign of George I., 17 14-1727. 
Reign of George II., 1727-1760. 
George III. came to throne, 1760. 



LITERATURE IN ENGLAND. 



Shakspere, 1564-16 16. 

Bacon, 1561-1626. 

Milton, 1608-1674; early poems 

(published), 1645; prose, 1641- 

1674 ; Paradise Lost, 1667. 
*• Metaphysical " poets : Donne, 

1573-1631 ; Herbert, 1593-1633 ; 

Quarles, 1592-1644 ; Cowley, 

1618-1667. 



" Cavalier " poets : Herrick, 1591- 
1674; Carew, 1598-1639; Surk- 
hng, 1609-1641 ; Lovelace, 1618- 
1658. 

Great preachers : Taylor, 1613- 
1667; Barrow, 1630- 1677; Tillot- 
son,i630-i694; South, 1633-1716. 

Pilgrim's Progress, 1678 and 1684, 

Dryden, 1631-17CO. 



10 



THE COLONIAL PERIOD. 



II 



The Spectator essays, 1711-1714. 

Swift, 1667-1745. 

Watts, 1674-1748. 

Young, 1681-1765. 

Pope, 1688-1744,- 

Thomson, 1700-1748. 



Novels of Defoe (1661-1731), Rich- 
ardson (1689-1761), Fielding 
(1707-1754), Smollett (1721- 
1771). 

Collins, 1721-1759. 

Gray, 1716-1771. 



I. LITERATURE IN VIRGINIA. 

For the begirxiiings of American literature we must go 
back nearly three centuries, to the time when a little 
band of Englishmen settled at Jamestown, Va., and 
erected a few rude huts on the edge of the primeval 
forest. Starvation, fever, Indians, and mismanagement 
soon threatened the very existence of the settlement, 
the horrors of the Starving Time slaying all but sixty 
out of a population of five hundred. Subsequently the 
colony grew and prospered. Yet toils and dangers 
abounded still. Forests must be felled, houses built, 
and new land brought under the plough. From time 
to time Indian massacres spread death and alarm. The 
political storms which^ shook the mother country in the 
middle of the century agitated the colony too. And a 
little later, Bacon's Rebellion threw Virginia itself into 
the fever of civil strife. Such conditions, when the ener- 
gies of men are absorbed in the strenuous labors of the 
pioneer, do not conduce to the growth of the fine arts. 
It is therefore no surprise. to find that the literature of 
Virginia during these early years is comparatively meagre 
and poor. The writers were often unpractised, and had 
small leisure for the graces of style. But they wrote with 
the largeness and freedom and manly strength which were 
characteristic of the age ; their pictures of peril by sea 
and land are powerful and graphic ; and in their descrip- 



12 LITERATURE IN VIRGINIA. 

tions of the New World and its strange inhabitants is 
sometimes a vein of rich though artless poetry. 

Foremost in time among these early authors stands 
* Captain John Smith,^ a man of bold spirit and many 
adventures. He seems to have been given to boastful- 
ness and romantic exaggeration ; in particular, his story 
about his rescue by Pocahontas has been much ques- 
tioned by modern historians.^ But his undoubted ex- 
periences in the New World were varied and often 
thrilHng; and in his several books he describes them 
and the country with the same rough-and-ready spirit 
in which he journeyed and fought. William Strachey 
still lives as a writer in his description of a storm at sea, 
which wrecked him and his company on their voyage to 
Virginia in 1609. His account, which it is thought may 
have suggested to Shakspere certain passages in The 
Tempest^ is in places magnificent, full of the awful might 
of the ocean in wrath. Other writers of the same class 
may here be passed by.^ Not so with George Sandys, 
the first poet upon Virginian soil, who there completed 
his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, during the troub- 
lous times of the Indian massacre in 1622. The authors 
mentioned thus far were Enghshmen writing in or about 
America rather than Americans even in spirit. But in 
1656 appeared a book by one who had come to love 
America as his home : " It is that Country in which I 
desire to spend the remnant of my dayes," writes John 

1 An author or work marked by an asterisk is represented among the 
extracts in Appendix, A. 

2 For a fair statement of the case against it, see Doyle's English 
Colonies in America, Vol. I., Appendix E; for the other side, Fiske's 
Old Virginia and Her Neighbours, Vol. I., p. 103. 

3 For the names and works of some of them, see Appendix, C. 



VIRGINIA'S GOLDEN AGE. 13 

Hammond in his Leah and Rachel; ^ and he contrasts the 
simple plenty and new opportunities in America with the 
hopeless poverty in the crowded cities of the Old World. 
The stormy days of Bacon's RebelHon called forth a good 
deal of political literature, but it is of little general in- 
terest. The sudden death of the rebel leader, however, 
was the occasion of an anonymous elegy of some merit, 
ending with these dignified lines : — 

Here let him rest; while wee this truth report 
Hee 's gon from hence unto a higher Court 
To pleade his Cause : where he by this doth know 
Whether to Ceaser hee was friend, or foe.^ 

Before the end of the century Virginia entered upon 
its colonial Golden Age. The Indians had been over- 
awed. Wealth and population were increasing rapidly. 
Along the pleasant waterways stood the comfortable 
mansion-houses of the planters, slave-huts clustering 
near, and broad acres of woodland and tillage stretching 
away on every side. Yet, because of the dearth of 
cities, printing-presses, and schools, literature flourished 
no better than before. The Virginian gentleman, inher- 
iting the tastes of the English country squire,^ preferred 

1 Page 28, ed. 1656. 

2 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, 1866-1867, p. 324. The earliest extant 
original poem written in Virginia seems to have been John Grave's A 
Song of Sion, published in England in 1662. Grave was a Quaker, 
and his crude lines are full of righteous indignation over the recent per- 
secution of his sect in America. The poem is not mentioned, so far as 
I know, in any history or cyclopaedia of American literature. I am in- 
debted to Mr. C. S. Brigham, of the Brown University Library, for 
calling my attention to the copy in the Harris Collection. 

3 From the first the leading colonists of Virginia were " gentlemen "; 
and after the defeat of the king's party many Cavaliers, from the class of 
the landed gentry, sought refuge in the colony, the ancestors of Wash« 
inojton and of other great Virginians being among them. 



14 LITERATURE IN VIRGINIA. 

plantation life to city life ; the fertile soil and the unin- 
telligent labor of slaves or " indentured " servants made 
agriculture, particularly the growing of tobacco, the most 
profitable industry; and the many rivers and creeks, 
allowing vessels to land their cargoes almost at the 
planter's door, rendered seaport towns unnecessary. 
Printing-presses were long forbidden by the king, and 
until past the middle of the eighteenth century there 
was but one printing-house in all Virginia. The more 
intelHgent Virginians were not indifferent to education : 
private schools were soon established, and a college 
was planned as early as 1622, although circumstances 
delayed its actual founding until 1693. But the Vir- 
ginians, as a whole, had not much zeal for education ; 
the difficulty of providing instruction for all was greatly 
increased by the sparseness of the population ; and in 
consequence the mass of the people were comparatively 
illiterate.^ In brief, colonial Virginia lacked the mental 
stimulus of life in towns and cities, where mind kindles 
mind by contact ; if books were written, it was difficult to 
get them printed ; and if they were printed, there were 
few people to read them. In such conditions the produc- 
tion of a large body of literature is not to be expected. 

Yet some literature there was. Rev. James Blair, the 
founder of William and Mary College, and for fifty years 
its president, pubHshed in 1722 a volume of discourses 
on the Sermon on the Mount ; and, in conjunction with 

1 Even the better class of planters, loving field-sports and life in the 
open air, cared less for books than did the New Englander. The 
clergymen, sent over by the authorities of the Church of England as 
good enough for a colony, were often ignorant and immoral. The in- 
dentured white servants (many of them paupers and convicts) and the 
negro slaves were of course mostly indifferent to education. 



THE RISE OF AMERICAN SPIRIT. 



15 



other writers, The Present State of Virginia and the Col- 
lege (1727). Professor Hugh Jones wrote an unpre- 
tentious little book, The Present State of Virginia (1724), 
very plain in style, but containing sensible suggestions for 
the betterment of the colony and some amusing strictures 
on the indolence of the inhabitants. A much more inter- 
esting work is the History of Virginia (1705, 1722), 
by Robert Beverley, whose style, although not highly 
polished, is flowing and often vivid. This book, by a 
native Virginian and about Virginia, reminds us that in 
the older colonies there was now growing up a generation 
American by birth, American in spirit, and moulded 
largely by American conditions. Henceforth we may 
expect to hear a more distinctively American note in 
colonial literature. In fact, the author to be spoken of 
next is clearly a product, in part, of the new conditions. 
Colonel William Byrd (1674-1744) inherited a princely 
fortune and high social position. After being educated 
abroad, he returned to Virginia, where he held high 
offices for many years, and on his estates at Westover 
collected a library of nearly four thousand volumes. He 
left several works in manuscript, the principal of which is 
*77z^ History of the Dividing Line^ a journal of the 
expedition that in 1729 ran the boundary line between 
Virginia and North Carolina. Here and elsewhere Byrd 
has a lightness of touch, a gayety, a lively fancy, a spark- 
ling wit, a dash and gusto which make his pages delight- 
ful reading. They show the Hterary polish of the England 
of Addison and Pope ; but they show something more. 
In Colonel Byrd the Virginian aristocracy of the earlier 
day came to full flower ; and his writings contain the 
very essence of that careless, sunny, free-limbed life of 



i6 LITERATURE IN NEW ENGLAND. 

the English Cavalier transplanted to the fresher air and 
wider spaces of the New World. Rev. William Stith, 
a native of Virginia, and president of WilHam and Mary 
College, brought out in 1 747 The History of the First Dis- 
covery and Settlement of Virginia} The book is clear 
and careful, commanding respect if not admiration, and 
forms a worthy close to the pre-Revolutionary Hterature 
of the principal colony of the South. 

2. LITERATURE IN NEW ENGLAND. 

The literature of colonial New England was more 
abundant than that of Virginia and somewhat different in 
savor. The causes for this lay in the nature of the 
colonists and the country. The sterile soil and severe cli- 
mate did not allow of large plantations cultivated by waste- 
ful slave-labor ; only the small farmer, working with the 
shrewd and tireless industry of a proprietor, could wring 
a profit from the stony hillsides. The rocky coast, with 
few large rivers but many harbors, favored the growth of 
seaport towns. Furthermore, while in Virginia the unit 
of population was the family, in New England it was at 
first the church, or congregation, knit together by a 
common faith and assembling every Sunday in a common 
building, the " meeting-house." These conditions, by 
producing a concentration of population, stimulated in- 
tellectual activity and made easier the establishment of 
common schools. The characteristics of the colonists 
tended to the same results. Most of the settlers of New 
England were " Separatists." On account of their dis- 

1 It was printed in the colony, and is a very creditable piece of typog* 
raphy. 



THE PURITAN INFLUENCE. 17 

satisfaction with certain things in the Church of England 
they had left it or been driven out of it, and had formed 
separate churches of their own ; and their motive in 
coming three thousand miles across a stormy ocean was 
to build up in the New World a Commonwealth of the 
Reformed Faith. Like all reformers they were men of 
independent thought ; they held an intellectual form 
of religion ; and they believed that every man must search 
the Scriptures for himself, under the guidance of a 
learned ministry, and work out his own salvation in fear 
and logic. Hence they thought it a duty to teach every 
child to read the Bible ; and so schools were planted 
almost as soon as corn, while Harvard College was 
founded only six years later than Boston itself^ In 
consequence of these characteristics and conditions the 
level of intelligence throughout New England was very 
high, and there was from the first a literary class, 
composed chiefly of clergymen and magistrates, who 
had the capacity, learning, and industry to write many 
books.^ 

The same causes which made the literature abundant 
made it also sombre and often dull. Much of it consists 
of religious works, and nearly all is permeated with the 
atmosphere of a faith which had more of gloom than of 
sunshine. Yet strength is here too, the strength of the 
Puritan character and the Puritan creed ; in the earlier 
years the romance of the New World tinges even the 

i"By the year 1649 every colony in New England, except Rhode 
Island, had made public instruction compulsory." — Tyler's A History 
of A^nerican Literature, Vol. I., p. 99. 

2 " At one time . . . there was in Massachusetts and Connecticut a 
Cambridge graduate for every two hundred and fifty inhabitants." — 
Ibid., p. 98. 

C 



i8 LITERATURE IN NEW ENGLAND. 

pages of the prosaic annalist; the sublime if gloomy 
poetry inherent in Calvinism gives a certain greatness 
to many a heavy sermon and dull poem ; and through- 
out the whole mass of this literature can be felt the 
intellectual soHdity, moral soundness, and sturdy practi- 
cal sense of the Anglo-Saxon race. 

Among the earliest writings were naturally Diaries, 
Histories, and Descriptions. The events of the first 
year of the Plymouth Colony were recorded in the 
^Journal of William Bradford and Edward Winslow, 
written in unvarnished style, but vivid and full of inter- 
esting incidents. In this daily record we may live over 
again the life of the Pilgrims- — their search along the 
wintry coast for a good site for a settlement, their first 
encounter with Indians, their landing at Plymouth, and 
their terrible sufferings during the first winter. The 
'^History of Plymouth, by the same William Bradford, 
for thirty years governor of the colony, comes down to 
1646.^ Like much of the contemporary prose written 
in England, it has at times a large though artless beauty, 

1 The manuscript has had a remarkable history. By Bradford's 
grandson, John Bradford, it was intrusted to Thomas Prince, who used 
it in compihng his History of New England. Governor Hutchinson had 
it when he published the second volume of The History of the Province 
of Massachusetts Bay, in 1767. From that time no one knew of its 
whereabouts for many years. In 1855 it was discovered to be in the 
library of the Bishop of London, though how it got there is still a mys- 
tery. The next year the history was printed for the first time, by the 
Massachusetts Historical Society, from a transcript of the original. In 
1897, by a graceful act of international courtesy, a decree of the Epis- 
copal Court of London gave the manuscript into the hands of the 
United States Ambassador, to be by hiiti delivered to the Common • 
wealth of Massachusetts. This was done ; and the precious volume, 
" bound in parchment, once white, but now grimy and much the worse 
for wear," after long and strange journeyings rests once more in the 
nation whose founding it describes. 



DIARIES, HISTORIES, AND DESCRIPTIONS. 19 

and it is full of the grave and solid strength of a man fit 
to build empires in the wilderness. The History of New 
England ^ by John Winthrop, first governor of Massa- 
chusetts Bay 'Colony, a diary of events for the years 
1 630-1 649, has much the same qualities, although it is 
more prosaic on the whole. As we turn the pages we 
get many interesting glimpses into the lives and minds 
of the New England Puritans. We read that bullets 
were used for farthings ; that a woman ^' had a cleft 
stick put on her tongue half an hour, for reproaching 
the elders " ; that a drunkard was " ordered to wear a 
red D about his neck for a year " ; that Rev. John 
Cotton was desired to '' go through the Bible and raise 
marginal notes upon all the knotty places " ; that the 
drowning of a child in a well was God's punishment 
upon the father for working after sundown the Saturday 
before, and was so confessed in church by the repentant 
Sabbath-breaker.^ More winning and no less true to the 
Puritan ideal are the '^Letters of Winthrop and his wife 
Margaret to each other, full of sweet human love shelter- 
ing under the greater love of God. 

Very different from the grave Puritan histories is the 
New English Canaan (1637) by Thomas Morton, a 
rollicking Royahst, who with thirty followers established 
himself at " Merrymount," near Boston, in 1626. He 
set up a Maypole eighty feet high, and danced about it 
with his jolly crew, the Indians joining in the revels, 
which it is probable were not wholly innocent. Morton's 
Puritan neighbors, greatly scandalized, cut down the 
wicked Maypole ; and when Morton persisted in sell- 
ing guns and rum to the Indians, they shipped him back 

1 The History of New England, Vol. \.,pass'un, ed. 1825. 



20 LITERATURE IN NEW ENGLAND. 

to England. There he wrote his book, describing the 
country and making fan of his strait-laced adversaries. 
Its intrinsic merits are small. But the figure of Thomas 
Morton dancing about his Maypole in reckless jolhty, 
while the godly look on with horror-stricken visages, is 
like a dash of color in a sombre landscape, and we could 
better spare a better man.^ 

We return to Puritanism in Edward Johnson^s Wonder- 
working Providence of Sion's Saviour (1654). Johnson 
was a captain, and a martial spirit animates his pages. 
The planting of New England with churches of the 
Reformed Faith is the beginning of God's final campaign 
against Antichrist ; the colonists are soldiers of " their 
glorious King Christ " ; and the ministers, whose work 
it is to " sound forth his silver Trumpets," are exhorted 
to '^ blow lowd and shrill, to this chiefest treble tune : 
^For the Armies of the great Jehovah are at hand.'"^ 
This conception gives unity and even a kind of great- 
ness to the book. But in form it is crude ; much of 
the subject-matter is dry ; and the narrowness and 
harshness of Puritanism are often painfully apparent. 

It has been wittily said of the pious settlers of New 
England that '^ first they fell on their knees and then 
they fell on the aborigines.'' The truth is, rather, that 
the Puritan sincerely endeavored to convert and educate 
these poor children of the forest ; but when the red man 
became hostile, and the torch and tomahawk began their 
dreadful work, then the white man slew without mercy. 
Both phases of the colonists' treatment of the Indians 
are represented in the literature of the period. Captain 

1 See Motley's historical romance, Merry-Mount. 

2 Wonder- Working Providence, pp. 23, 7, ed. 1654. 



RELIGIOUS AND CONTROVERSIAL WORKS. 21 

John Mason, the hero of the Pequot War, became in his 
last years its historian also, telling the story of that terrible 
slaughter in' the swamp with a rough strength that fits the 
subject well, and ending with a song of triumph as con- 
fident of God's approval and as pitiless toward God's 
enemies as the song of the IsraeHtes at the Red Sea. 
Very different in spirit are the writings of the good 
John Eliot, which tell of his patient labors for the 
salvation of the Indians ; and the books of Daniel 
GooKiN, which describe the "Praying," or Christian, 
Indians, and the effect of the gospel upon them. 

A second class of these early writings consists of Re- 
ligious and Controversial Works. The modern reader 
can hardly realize how large a place in the Hfe of the 
New England Puritans was filled by religion. Attendance 
upon church was a pleasure to most, a duty to all. Ab- 
sence was punished by fines or the stocks, and sleepers 
were awakened by the constable. The meeting-houses 
were as cold as barns and almost as bare. The services 
lasted from three to five hours. In the high pulpit stood 
the minister, awful by reason of his learning, piety, 
and sacred office, and stormed Heaven in prodigiously 
long prayers, or thundered down upon the pews the wrath 
of God in a sermon laid out in many divisions and sub- 
divisions, all bristling with proof-texts and buttressed 
with invincible logic.^ His hearers followed the thought 

1 "Then Mr. Torrey stood up and pray'd near Two Hours: . . . 
towards the End of his Prayer, hinting at still new and agreable Scenes 
of Tho't, we cou'd not help wishing Him to enlarge upon them: . . . 
we could have gladly heard Him an Hour longer." — A Harvard stu- 
dent, writing of a day of prayer in 1696. (Sibley's Harvard Graduates, 
Vol. I., p. 566.) " He [Thomas Hooker] preached in the afternoon, 
and having gone on . . . about a quarter of an hour, he was at a stand, 
and told the people, that God had deprived him both of his strength 



22 LITERATURE IN NEW ENGLAND. 

closely, keen to detect a slip in orthodoxy or reasoning, 
many taking down the main points in their note-books. 
To these New England communities the sermon was the 
great intellectual and literary feast of the week, and the 
ministers were their great men, venerated by young and 
old and deferred to even by the magistrates. Of the 
early clergymen three were preeminent above the rest — 
John Cotton, Thomas Shepard, and * Thomas Hooker. 
All three were graduates of Cambridge University, Eng- 
land, and Cotton had been famous there as a scholar 
and preacher. All had been clergymen of the English 
Church; but being hunted out of England because of 
their Puritanism, they fled to Massachusetts. Cotton 
was given the best pulpit in Boston, and there remained 
till his death, in 1652, the acknowledged leader of the 
New England clergy. ^*In his countenance," says Cotton 
Mather, " there was an inexpressible sort of Majesty, which 
commanded Reverence from all that approached him."^ 
Thomas Shepard, pastor at Cambridge from 1636 to 
1649, was greater as a pulpit orator, having a manner 
peculiarly sweet and persuasive ; his theology partook of 
the harshness of his age and sect, but he at least presented 
it with satisfying sincerity and power. Thomas Hooker, 
who with his congregation founded Hartford in 1636, 
was a masterful man, of whom a contemporary said that 
^Mvhile doing his Master's work" he "would put a king 
in his pocket " ; ^ his published sermons show that he was 
a powerful orator. 

and matter, &c. and so went forth, and about half an hour after returned 
again, and went on to very good purpose about two hours." — Winthrop's 
The History of New England, Vol. I., p. 304, ed. 1825. 

1 Magnalia, Book III., p. 28, ed. 1702. 

2 Ibid., p. 64, ed. 1702. 



RELIGIOUS AND CONTROVERSIAL WORKS. 23 

The mood of the Puritan was militant, and his creed 
was one long argument; hence controversial writings 
flowed from his pen like water. In Puritan England 
the air was thick with pamphlets. Even Milton delayed 
for twenty years the composition of his great epic that he 
might serve God and his country in argumentative prose. 
In Puritan New England, at the same period, contro- 
versial works also abounded, for the Commonwealth of 
the Orthodox had found enemies without and within to 
trouble it — Quakers, Anabaptists, Familists, Antinomians, 
and what not. These writings have, as a rule, little at- 
traction for the reader of to-day. The cruelly persecuted 
Quakers put forth petitions and denunciations, noble in 
spirit, but without special literary merit. The writings 
of Roger Williams (i6oo?-i684) have permanent value 
because they contain great thoughts. In an age when 
even John Milton, pleading for toleration, made an excep- 
tion of "Popery and open superstition," which he said 
"should be extirpate,"^ this Welsh minister boldly pro- 
claimed the doctrine of universal " soul-liberty," saying, 
" It is the will and command of God, that ... a permis- 
sion of the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish or Antichris- 
tian consciences and worships, be granted to all men in 
all Nations." ^ But his books are ill-proportioned, diffuse, 
and obscure — faults which they share, it is true, with 
most of the controversial Kterature of the day. At times, 
however, he has passages of lucid argument or impas- 
sioned eloquence ; and his individual sentences are now 
and then poetical, as when he says, " I fear not so much 
iron and steel as the cutting of our throats with golden 

1 Areopagitlca (1644), p. 54, Hales's ed., 1894. 

2 The Bloody Tcnent, prefatory propositions, ed. 1644. 



Z4 LITERATURE IN NEW ENGLAND. 

knives," or speaks of the snow as the " white legions of 
the Most High.''^ A much more readable little book 
is Nathaniel Ward's *T/ie Simple Cobler of Aggawam 
(1647), i^ which the author slashes away, with more wit 
than wisdom, in a racy, epigrammatic style, at the mon- 
strous new doctrine of toleration, long hair on men, the 
folUes of women's dress, and other errors of the time. 
The book is narrow-minded, angry, sometimes abusive, 
but it is also amusing ; within a year it went through four 
editions, and after two centuries and a half is still alive. 

There is yet a third division of this earliest literature, 
its Poetry. The first known poem written in New Eng- 
land was Nova Anglia (1625), by William Morrell, a 
clergyman of the English Church, who resided in Massa- 
chusetts for a year or two. The poem describes the 
country and the Indians, and is written in elegant Latin 
with a paraphrase in awkward English verse.^ The New 
England Puritans were enemies to art in general, believ- 
ing that its pleasures seduced the soul from God; yet 
poetry they both studied and practised. The classics of 
Greece and Rome formed the backbone of their college 
curricula, and the writing of Enghsh verse, chiefly elegies 
and epitaphs, was pursued as a pious duty and godly rec- 
reation by many of the solemn New England divines and 
other dignitaries.^ There is no poetry in most of these 
poems, which are filled to the brim, instead, with puns 

1 Letters, in Publications of Narragansett Club, Vol. VI., pp. 15, 84. 

2 Griswold, in his Poets and Poetry of Avierica, quotes some anony- 
mous doggerel about life in New England, which he says is ** believed 
to have been w^ritten about the year 1630." 

^ Morton's New Eitgland's Memoriat entombs many of these remark- 
able productions. Johnson's Wonder-Working Provideftce is inter- 
spersed with the worthy captain's would-be metrical manufactures ; to 
read them is like being tossed on the points of bayonets. 



SEVENTEENTH CENTURY POETRY. 25 

and strained ''conceits," in imitation of the contempo- 
rary "metaphysical" or "fantastic" poets of England. 
Thus the Rev. Samuel Stone was lauded as 

Whetstone, that edgefy'd th' obtusest mind : 
Loadstone, that drew the iron heart unkind; . . • 
A stone for kingly David's use so fit. 
As would not fail Goliah's front to hit.^ 

And Rev. John Cotton was described as "a Living Breath- 
ing Bible," where 

Gospel and Law, in's Heart, had Each its Column; 
His Head an Index to the Sacred Volume; 
His very name a Title-Page; and next, 
His Life a Commentary on the Text.^ 

In The Whole Booke of Psalmes^ consisting of the Psalms 
translated into English verse by " the chief divines in the 
country," to be sung in church, the style and verse are 
simply barbarous. Some of the lines it is quite impossi- 
ble to scan by any methods however heroic, and most of 
them clank like an engine with gravel in the bearings.* 
Let a few lines speak for the whole : — 

1 By " E. B." (Edward Bulkley ?) in Neio England's Memorial, 
p. 180, ed. 1772. 

2 B. Woodbridge, in Magnalia., Book III., p. 31, ed. 1702. 
8 Usually known as The Bay Psalm Book. 

4 The translators themselves say, in the preface, " If therefore the 
verses are not always so smooth and elegant as some may desire, . . . 
wee have . . . attended . . . fidelity rather then poetry." But the trans- 
lators of The Psalms, Hy7nns, and Spiritual Songs, which appeared a 
few years later, say they have had " a special eye both to the gravity of 
the phrase of Sacred Writ, and sweetness of the Verse" — with what 
success let the following lines from the So?ig of Deborah testify : — 

He water ask'd, she gave him : 

in Lordly dish she fetch'd 
Him butter forth : unto the nayl 

she forth her left hand stretch 'd, 



26 LITERATURE IN NEW ENGLAND. 

Then th' earth shooke, & quak't, & mountaines 
roots moov'd, & were stird at his ire. 

— Psalm 18:7.^ 

In death no mem'ry is of thee 
and who shall prayse thee in the grave ? 
I faint with groanes, all night my bed 
swims, I with tears my couch washt have. 

— Psalm 6: 5, 6.1 

But better things were coming. In 1650 there ap- 
peared in London a volume of poems entitled, The Tenth 
Muse lately sprung up in America, The Tenth Muse 
was *Mrs. Anne Bradstreet (16 13-1672), wife of Gov- 
ernor Simon Bradstreet and daughter of Governor 
Thomas Dudley. Her longest poem, The Foure Mon- 
archies, is a bald, dry chronicle in rhyme. The Foure 
Elements, The Foure Humours^ The Four Ages of Man, 
and '^The Foure Seasons are not much better, although 
they occasionally have considerable vivacity and vividness. 
But in some of her shorter poems appear a lightness and 
prettiness, a feminine tenderness and fancy; while in 
the Spenser-like stanzas called ^Contemplations there is 
much sweetness and flow of verse, and the pictures of 
nature have a good deal of placid beauty. In more 
favorable circumstances, Mrs. Bradstreet would probably 
have developed into a very intellectual woman and a 
beautiful minor poet.^ But Puritanism and the crudeness 

Her right hand to the workmans maul 

and Sisera hammered : 
She pierc'd and struck his temples through, 
and then cut off his head. 

— The Psalms, Hymns, and 

Spiritual Songs, ed. 1658 (?), 

1 The Whole Booke of Psalmes, ed. 1640. 

2 Among her descendants were W. E. Channing, R. H. Dana, Wen- 



SEVENTEENTH CENTURY POETRY. 27 

of the New World stunted her mental growth and clipped 
her wings of song. She took for her models the poorer 
half of the literature of her day. Spenser she indeed 
knew, and Raleigh's noble History of the World was the 
basis of her Foiire Monarchies, But Shakspere and his 
fellow dramatists she never mentions ; no doubt to her, 
as to all her sect, they were sons of Behal. Her favorite 
poets seem to have been of the " fantastic " school, who 
had more gift for puns and quirks and ingenious con- 
ceits than for the passion, imagination, and melody of 
true poesie. 

New England Puritanism found its poet-laureate in 
Michael Wigglesworth (i 631-1705), a graduate of 
Harvard College, and pastor and physician at Maiden. 
His Meat out of the Eater (1669), on the " usefulness of 
afflictions,'* teaches that 

We must not on the Knee 

Be always dandled, 
Nor must we think to ride to Heaven 

Upon a Feather-bed.i 

His masterpiece is ^The Day of Doom (1662?),^ for 
a century the most popular book in New England after 
the Bible and the Catechism. The essence of Calvinism 

dell Phillips, and O. W. Holmes. Her Meditations contain some 
pithy sayings : " Authority without wisedom is like a heavy axe without 
an edg, fitter to bruise then polish;" " Dimne eyes are the concomi- 
tants of old age; and short sightednes in those that are eyes of a 
Republique, fortels a declineing State." See the 1867 edition of her 
works, pp. Ixix, 50, 55. 

1 Meat out of the Eater, p. 4, ed. 17 17. 

2 See The Historical Magazine, December, 1863, for an article by 
John W. Dean, containing memoranda by Wigglesworth, about the 
dates of the two poems. The first edition of The Day of Doom, of 1800 
.jopies, was nearly all sold in a year. 



28 LITERATURE IN NEW ENGLAND. 

IS in the poem. Christ suddenly appears in the sky at 
midnight, in a blinding glory ; the quick and the dead 
are brought before him ; the various classes of the lost, 
including non-elect infants, plead for mercy with much 
logical acumen, but are all refuted by Christ ; the plunge 
into a lurid physical hell follows, the infants being as- 
signed to "the easiest room" ;^ and the saints, sorrowing 
not " a whit " ^ for the damnation of wife, husband, parent, 
or child (" such compassion " being now " out of fashion, 
and wholly laid aside "^), ascend into heaven to enjoy 
its pleasures forever. In manner The Day of Doom is 
dreadfully crabbed and harsh; but the metre has a 
cheap jingle pleasing to dull ears, while the crude 
strength and bald realism of the style suited the 
Yankee Puritan's strenuous, practical mind. There is 
sublimity, too, in the horrible conceptions of the poem, 
but it is the ghastly subHmity of a colossal skeleton 
grinning the grin of Eternal Death. How hard and 
narrow and meanly literal this epic of New England 
Calvinism is, how devoid of the noble sublime with its 
attendant grace and beauty, becomes painfully apparent 
when we compare it with another Puritan poem of the 
same period and upon a similar theme — the Paradise 
Lost of John Milton.^ 

The last quarter of the seventeenth century was marked 
by changes, significant for literature, in the spirit of the 
colonists. Most of the inhabitants of New England were 
now American born, loving the land of their fathers but 

1 The Day of Doom, stanzas i8i, 197, 196, ed. 1715. 

2 The Day of Doo7n may have been somewhat influenced by Stir- 
ling's Doomes-Day (1614), although the similarity in general plan and 
occasionally in expression is perhaps sufficiently accounted for by their 
having a common original. 



COTTON MATHER. 29 

regarding America as their own country. Society and 
state were becoming more secular and liberal. The right 
to vote was no longer confined to members of Congrega- 
tional churches ; the growth of population, trade, and 
wealth brought with it a widening of interests ; religion 
and the church filled a relatively smaller place ; and the 
severity of Puritan morals and the intolerance of Puritan 
theology began to be somewhat relaxed.^ Yet Religious 
and Controversial Writings abounded as before ; for the 
clergy were still powerful, and the supposed degeneracy 
of the times urged them to activity.^ In particular. Cot- 
ton Mather (1663-1728), the great man of his day, 
set himself to stem the ebbing tide. He was the grand- 
son of two of the early giants, John Cotton and Richard 
Mather; and his father, Increase Mather, was president 
of Harvard College, a powerful preacher, and prolific 
author. In his sixteenth year Mather received the 
bachelor's degree at Harvard ; and before he was nine- 
teen, the master's degree. He then became his father's 

1 John Cotton approved of the banishment of Roger Williams in 
1636. His grandson, Cotton Mather, in 1718 preached the sermon at 
the ordination of a Baptist minister. 

2 The worldly vanity of wearing wigs, a custom which was now 
becoming common among the descendants of the " Round-heads," is 
thus attacked by Benjamin Bosworth in Signs of Apostacy Lamented 
(1693): — 

When Perriwigs in Thrones and Pulpits get, 
And Hairy Top-knots in high Seats are set ; 
Then may we Pray, have Mercy Lord on us. 
That in New-England it should now be thus. 
Which in time past a Land of Pray'r hath been, 
But now is Pray'r turn'd out of Doors by Sin. . . . 
Art thou a Christian, O then why dost wear 
Upon thy Sacred Head, the filthy Hair 
Of some vile Wretch, by foul Disease that fell. 
Whose Soul perhaps is burning now in Hell ? 



30 LITERATURE IN NEW ENGLAND. 

assistant in the pastorate of the North Church, Boston, 
where he remained till death. Cotton Mather read 
enormously in many languages, preached thousands of 
sermons, and published three hundred and eighty-three 
pamphlets or books.^ It is no wonder that such a man 
wrote over his study door, as a warning to visitors. Be 
Short. In boyhood he composed forms of prayer for 
his school- fellows and " obliged them to pray.** In later 
life, each day was packed full of prayers, study, and minis- 
trations public or private. He kept more than four hun- 
dred fasts, besides many midnight vigils, when he lay for 
hours on his study floor, now in agonies over his " vile- 
ness," now in spiritual ecstasy. At odd moments through- 
out the day he wedged in pious ejaculations, at one time 
fining himself for each omission — which worked a speedy 
cure. Every incident must be spiritually improved : on 
meeting a tall man he would pray, " Lord, give that man 
high attainments in Christianity" ; "and when he did so 
mean an action as paring his nails, he thought how he 
might lay aside all superfluity of naughtiness." In his 
writings Mather strove mightily to bring New England 
back to the Puritan ideal of godliness. This purpose is 
the inspiration of his great work, ^Magnalia Christi 
Americana : or, the Ecclesiastical History of New-Eng- 
land ( 1 702) , which treats of the planting of New England, 
the lives of eminent magistrates and divines. Harvard Col- 
lege, the New England churches, wonderful providences 
(including cases of witchcraft), and "the Wars of the 

1 Samuel Mather's Life of Cotton Mather, p. 178, ed. 1729; from 
which most of the other facts, and all the quotations, about Mather are 
also taken. Sabin's Bibliotheca Aviericana attributes four hundred and 
eleven works to Cotton Mather. Three hundred and eighty-three are 
enough. 



COTTON MATHER. 3I 

Lord," or the struggles with Quakers, Anabaptists, Ind- 
ians, and other disturbers of the peace of the Puritan elect. 
The book has some historical value, because the writer 
was so near to the events narrated; but it is careless, 
fantastic, and full of pedantry, the pages being crammed 
with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, learned digressions, and 
abominable puns. Yet the narrative portions sometimes 
have considerable interest, anecdotes frequently enliven 
an otherwise dull passage, and the whole book is impres- 
sive by its bulky strength. Cotton Mather's contempo- 
rary reputation in America was very great, and it even 
extended to the Old World.-^ He lives still, after a 
fashion, as the most conspicuous American writer of the 
seventeenth century. Yet on the whole his Hfe was a 
failure, and has the pathos of failure j for he fought on 
the side of a doomed cause. Puritanism was passing 
away, never to return, and even Cotton Mather battled 
for it in vain.^ 



1 Glasgow University gave him the degree of D.D. ; and he at least 
believed that he had been made a Fellow of the Royal Society, although 
the letter which he received announcing his election seems to have been 
a hoax, as the records of the Society are silent upon the point. 

2 The titles of the chief writings of Cotton and of Increase Mather 
upon witchcraft can be seen in Appendix, C. It is easy to exaggerate 
the culpability of the Mathers in the horrible delusion of the Salem 
Witchcraft. Belief in witches was still common throughout the civil- 
ized world, some of the best and wisest men in England sharing in it. 
In New England, furthermore, there was a popular theory that the 
legions of the Devil, largely driven out of Christian Europe, had taken 
refuge in the wilds of America ; and that, dismayed and furious at the 
Puritans' attack upon this their final stronghold, they had marshalled 
their forces for one desperate assault upon the New England Theoc- 
racy. In the supposed degeneracy of the New England churches of 
his day Cotton Mather thus saw the special hand of the Devil ; and the 
witches were soldiers of the Prince of Darkness in the same great 
campaign. This conception was a large one, and is a good example ol 



32 LITERATURE IN NEW ENGLAND. 

Of the many able New England divines in the first 
half of the eighteenth century three may be mentioned 
as representative — John Wise, Benjamin Colman, and 
Mather Byles. The writings of all reveal the influence 
of the simpler, clearer, more systematic prose style which 
had begun to prevail in England before the end of the 
preceding century. Wise, a man of powerful body and 
powerful mind, whose fame has not equalled his deserts, 
in his two books on church government shows broad 
democratic principles, masterful logic, and a sinewy style 
enhvened by sarcasm and humor. Colman was a man 
of great personal charm and charitable spirit, a fascinat- 
ing pulpit orator, and a writer of pohshed Addisonian Eng- 
lish. Byles, poet, wit, and man of letters, cultivated the 
graces of style as an element in the preacher's power, and 
in the following advice to young ministers he aims directly 
at faults of the older style : " Rattling periods, uncouth 
jargon, affected phrases, and finical jingles — let them 



the gloomy but powerful poetry which underlay the prosaic life of the 
New England Puritans, in whom such imaginations had been quickened 
by the romance and mystery of the New World with its strange natives 
and vast and wooded solitudes. The conception was also a perfectly 
natural one for men holding the Puritan theology and confronted with 
a series of mysterious facts much like the modern phenomena of spirit- 
ualism, clairvoyance, and hypnotism. Some allowance must also be 
made for the panic which always threatens individuals and communi- 
ties in the presence of supposedly supernatural agencies with mys- 
terious and unlimited power. New England was badly scared by the 
witches, and there is nothing more cruel than fear. It should, however, 
be remembered to Cotton Mather's credit that he did not believe in 
convicting witches on " spectral evidence " alone, for the characteristic 
reason that the devils might have power to cause the apparitions of in- 
nocent persons to be seen by the bewitched as the cause of their tor- 
ments, and the " campaign " against the godly thus go on all the more 
merrily ; he believed in the efficacy of fasting and prayer, and himself 
tried this means of exorcism with some success. 



JONATHAN EDWARDS. 33 

be . . . hissed from the desk and blotted from the 
page."^ 

In the case of most of the clergymen of this period the 
new graces were accompanied by some loss of the old 
power. Not so with ^Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), 
one of the great philosophical intellects of the world. 
He graduated at Yale College in 1720 ; was tutor there 
for awhile; in 1727 was ordained at Northampton; in 
1 75 1 became missionary to a settlement of Indians near 
Stockbridge; assumed the presidency of Princeton Col- 
lege in 1758, but died soon after from inoculation for 
small pox. In the popular mind Jonathan Edwards is 
merely the author of ^ Sinners zn the Hands of an Angry 
God (1741), the terrible preacher of the most hateful 
dogmas of Calvinism — a wholly inadequate view of a 
wonderful man. Personally he was of almost angelic 
sweetness and purity, an intellectual saint rapt into high 
communion with the Invisible ; and his conception of 
God, although it included many dark and terrible things, 
also dwelt with ecstasy upon the ineffable Love and 
Beauty of the Divine Being. He was an ideaHst and 
essentially a poet, seeing in the brightest glories of the 
material universe only a dim shadow of the blinding 
Loveliness of Infinite Spirit. His intellect was of the 
first order. At twelve he thought and wrote in a way 
beyond the power of most men ; while a tutor at Yale he 
showed remarkable originality in science, suggesting the 
existence of a cosmic ether and demonstrating that the 
fixed stars are suns ; and his Freedom of the Will (1754) 
has been called "the one large contribution which 

1 Ordination sermon, New London, 1758, as quoted in Tyler's A His* 
tory of Avierican Literature, Vol. II., p. 195. 
D 



34 LITERATURE IN NEW ENGLAND. 

America has made to the deeper philosophic thought of the 
world." ^ As a preacher, Edwards had wonderful power. 
In his little parish at Northampton began the Great 
Awakening, for which the churches of New England 
had thirsted for half a century, and which spread over 
America and extended even to Great Britain. He usually 
read his sermons, and his manner was very quiet. ' But 
the style was clear as light, the logic cumulative and un- 
answerable, the spiritual intensity tremendous. His 
hearers felt themselves in the grip of a giant intellect. 
Pitilessly it laid bare their sins. Irresistibly it dragged 
them, all vile, into the presence of Absolute Holiness 
and Inexorable Justice. Hell flamed beneath them. It 
yawned to catch them. Women fainted ; men cried out 
in agony ; only the preacher was calm, and his calmness 
was more terrible than excitement. In taking leave of 
Jonathan Edwards, it is impossible not to regret that his 
environment led him so largely to waste his magnificent 
powers upon theological problems which the world was 
soon to leave behind. If he could have given himself 
to literature, science, or pure philosophy, mankind would 
be the richer. Yet as it is, he is one of the very few 
American writers whose fame is world-wide. 

Journals, Narratives, and Histories were even more 
numerous in this later portion of the colonial period than 
in the earlier. The ^ Diary of Judge Samuel Sewall, 
from 1674 to 1729, gives very interesting and sometimes 
very amusing pictures of the man and the times — the 



i See A. V. G. Allen's life of Edwards (American Religious Leaders 
series), p. 283, where the quotation is given, anonymously. For a 
statement of Edwards's main theses about the will, see page 192 of this 
History. 



JOURNALS, NARRATIVES, AND HISTORIES. 35 

harmless vanity, love of creature comforts, hatred of 
wigs, and mingled shrewdness and simplicity of the one ; 
the political troubles, quaint customs, systematic piety, 
and abundance of human nature (regenerate and unre- 
generate) in the other. The '^Journal of Sarah K. 
Knight, containing an account of her journey from 
Boston to New York in 1 704, is one of the most enter- 
taining things in American colonial literature, light of 
touch, graphic, bubbling over with wit and humor. 
Indian troubles. King Philip's War in particular, sup- 
plied much interesting material for histories and per- 
sonal narratives. William Hubbard's Narrative of the 
Troubles with the Indians (1677), written in plain, 
clear style which the subject-matter sometimes lifts 
into graphicness, soon became a classic and is good 
reading still. The ^Nar7'ative of the Captivity (1682?), 
by Mary Rowlandson, who was made a captive by the 
Indians during King Philip's War, describes, in words 
that bring the dreadful scenes powerfully before the eye, 
the burning of Lancaster, the bloody slaughter of men, 
women, and children, her weary journeyings through the 
wilds with her brutal captors (she carrying her wounded 
baby in her arms) , and her final ransom. John Williams's 
The Redeemed Captive (1707) is a narrative of similar ex- 
periences after the burning of Deerfield by the Indians in 
1 704. Thomas Church's Entertaining Passages Relating 
to Philip's War (1716) was based upon the notes of the 
author's father, Benjamin Church, the doughty Indian 
fighter, whose forces finally caught and slew the great 
chief; and a hearty, idiomatic piece of writing it is, con- 
taining many exciting scenes. The histories of Penhallow 
(i 726), Callender (i 739), D0UGL.4SS ( 1 755 ), and others, 



36 LITERATURE IN NEW ENGLAND. 

although valuable, are less significant than Thomas Prince's 
Chronological History of New England (1736), which 
by its scholarly carefulness and fairness prophesied future 
methods of writing history, and was " the most meritori- 
ous piece of historical work published in America up to 
that date." ^ 

Poetry in these same years shows, on the whole, little 
real improvement. " Fantastic " hobbling elegies and 
other poems continued to be written for a while. Cot- 
ton Mather, unwilling to be outdone in anything, pro- 
duced several of atrgiiio us badn g^.^ John Norton, John 
Rogers, and Urian Oakes wrote with some dignity and 
imagination, although the total effect is greatly marred 
by extravagances and unnatural '' conceits." ^ Honest 
Peter Folger blurted out a blunt, manly plea for reli- 
gious toleration, in homely verse that at least cannot be 

1 Tyler's A History of American Literature, Vol. II., p. 145. In his 
love of accuracy and original sources Prince belongs to the contem- 
porary " erudite " school of historians, who all over Europe were amass- 
ing, with a painstaking and critical spirit that was new, vast stores 
of material for the re-writing of history. Stith's The History of Virginia 
shows the same tendency. See Professor J. F. Jameson's The Devel- 
opment of Modern European Historiography , in The Atlantic Monthly , 
September, 1890. 

2 In his elegy on Oakes (p. 11, ed. 1682) he stays his tears to remark, 

How many Angels on a Needle's point 

Can stand, is thought, perhaps, a needless Point ; 

and, in the preface to the same poem, for the consolation of bereaved 
Boston he presents the anagram, Sob Not. His more impassioned 
elegiac style may be seen in these lines from Vigilantius , a poem occa- 
sioned by the death of seven young ministers {Elegies and Epitaphs^ a 
reprint in The Club of Odd Volumes, 1896) : — 

Churches, Weep on ; & Wounded yield your Tears ; 
Tears use to flow from hack't New English Firrs. 

8 See Norton's and Rogers's eulogies on Anne Bradstreet, in the 1867 
edition of her works. 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY POETRY. 37 

accused of artifice. Benjamin Thomson's poems show 
some satiric vigor and give promise of better things to 
come. Yet Nicholas Noyes, the last and perhaps the 
worst of the fantastics, did not cease from his ingenious 
devices in punning song until the eighteenth century 
was well on its way.^ But the new school of poetry in 
England, represented by Dryden and Pope, was already 
affecting American verse, and early in the eighteenth 
century it became supreme. The good sense, clearness, 
and polish of this so-called *^ classic " poetry, its conven- 
tional diction, too, its overfondness for antithesis, balance, 
and other rhetorical tricks, its tendency in general to 
smooth commonplace and frigid propriety, are all echoed 
in the poems of Francis Knapp, Benjamin Colman, Jane 
TuRRELL, Roger Wolcott, Mather Byles, Rev. John 
Adams, and others.^ In *A Collection of Poems by 
several Hands (1744), along with much commonplace 
and some doggerel are a few rather pretty or vivacious 
lines, while the poem describing a commencement at 
Harvard contains several lively passages. The coarse 
verses of John Seccomb, although much overrated, have 
some humor; and those of * Joseph Green are often 
bright and witty. The rough ballads of the time, such 
as the anonymous LoveweWs Fight (1725), have native 
vigor and spirit. Samuel Niles's A Brief and Plain 
Essay (1747), on the reduction of Louisburg, is nothing 
but rhymed prose of the baldest, dreariest sort. John 
Maylem's Conquest of Louisburg (1758) and Gallic 

1 A Prefatory Poem in the Magnalia is by Noyes. 

2 Byles wrote a letter of fulsome flattery to Pope, and received in re- 
turn a copy of the latter's translation of the Odyssey. See Stedman and 
Hutchinson's A Library of American Literature, Vol. II., p. 431, for the 
letter. 



38 LITERATURE IN THE OTHER COLONIES. 

Perfidy (1758) are all in valiant Pistol's swaggering vein, 
amusing instances of rant mistaken for force, and bom- 
bast for sublimity. The line, 

Death, blunderbuss, artillery, and blood ! ^ 

both exemplifies and describes the style of this gory- 
minded poet, who took for his pseudonyme Philo-Bellum, 
After these exhibitions of New World crudeness and bad 
taste, it is almost a pleasure to turn to the smooth con- 
ventionalisms oi Pietas et Gratulatio (1761), a collection 
of poems in Latin, Greek, and English, by graduates of 
Harvard, mourning the death of George II., and hailing 
the accession of George HI. in strains of extravagant 
praise which the events of the next few years were to 
make doubly ridiculous. The time for New England to 
speak in verse was not yet come. Her best utterance 
as yet had been in prose ; and that, as we have seen, was 
far from despicable. 

3. LITERATURE IN THE OTHER COLONIES. 

The Carolinas and Georgia produced little Hterature 
in colonial times. John Archdale, formerly governor 
of the colony, published in 1707 A New Descriptio7i of 
That Fertile and Pleasant Province of Carolina, Two 
years later appeared The History of Carolina by John 
Lawson, containing his journal of a thousand miles of 
travel in South Carolina, a description of North Carolina, 
and an account of the Indians ; the book is written in a 
free, flowing style, and is packed full of keen observation. 
The letters of Eliza Pinckney afford interesting gUmpses 

1 The Conquest of Lou is burg; p. 6. ed. 1775 (?). 



THE MIDDLE COLONIES. 39 

of life in South Carolina in the middle of the eighteenth 
century, showing that in Charleston there was much social 
gayety and considerable literary culture. A New Voyage 
to Georgia (-1737), "by a young gentleman/* gives a 
vivid idea of the difficulty of travelling in a new country 
covered with woods, creeks, and swamps, and describes 
some interesting incidents in a lively way. Several other 
descriptions of the young colony were published at about 
the same time. Among them was A True and Historical 
Narrative of the Colony of Georgia (1741), by Patrick 
Tailfer and other discontents, an arraignment of Gov- 
ernor Oglethorpe for alleged mismanagement ; it is writ- 
ten in strong, finished style, and the dedication to 
Oglethorpe is a fine piece of irony. 

Of the Middle Colonies Pennsylvania alone developed 
much literary activity. In Maryland the only two not- 
able works were written by. temporary sojourners in the 
colony. George Alsop's A Character of the Province of 
Mary-Land (1666), in verse and prose, is a " medley of 
frolicsome papers," full of *^ grotesque and slashing en- 
ergy," ^ describing the colony and its inhabitants. Half 
a century later appeared The Sot- Weed Factor : Or, A 
Voyage to Maryland (1708)., by Ebenezer Cook; the 
poem is often coarse and sometimes dull, but it has many 
spirited scenes and a good deal of real humor. In 1670 
Daniel Denton put out a rather fresh little book paint- 
ing life in the colony of New York in rosy colors, with 
occasional pretty strokes of description. Cadwallader 
Golden of New York wrote a History of the Five Indian 
Nations (1727), filled with petty engagements dryly 
told and dull speeches ; the introduction, however, has 

1 Tyler's A History of American Literature, Vol. I., p. 66. 



40 LITERATURE IN THE OTHER COLONIES. 

some interesting descriptions of Indian customs. Wil- 
liam Smith's The History of New York (1757) is a plain 
and heavy work, but contains valuable information. A man 
of greater literary gifts was William Livingston, promi- 
nent as a statesman in the period of the Revolution ; his 
first appearance, however, was as a poet in Philosophic 
Solitude (1747), which is written in the conventional 
eighteenth-century manner, but is smooth and pretty. 

In literary activity Pennsylvania soon became second 
only to Massachusetts, more than four hundred original 
books or pamphlets being printed in Philadelphia before 
the Revolution.^ William Penn and his associates in the 
founding of the colony believed in education and intel- 
lectual freedom ; " before the pines had been cleared 
from the ground he began to build schools and set up a 
printing press," ^ and "through every turnpike in that 
province ideas travelled toll free." ^ Penn himself during 
his residence in the colony wrote nothing except letters ; 
these, however, are pleasant reading, something of the 
large, calm beauty of his spirit passing into his style. 
The long letter written in 1683 to the Free Society of 
Traders contains an interesting description of the Ind- 
ians, whose friendship Penn so well knew how to win.^ 
Gabriel Thomas published an account of the province 
in 1698, a rather pleasing little book for its simpleness 
and innocent exaggeration.^ Jonathan Dickenson, a 

1 T. I. Wharton's The Provincial Literature of Pennsylvania, p. 124, 
as cited in Tyler's A History of American Literature, Vol. II., pp. 227, 
228. 

2 W. H. Dixon's William Penn, p. 207. 

3 Tyler's A History of American Literature, Vol. II., p. 226. 

4 See Janney's Life of William Penn, p. 238, ed. 1852. 

s "The Christian Children born here," he says, " are generally well- 
favoured and Beautiful to behold ; . . . being in the general, observ'd 



THE PHILADELPHIA WRITERS. 41 

Philadelphia merchant, in his God's Protecting Providence 
(1699), described very graphically his shipwreck on the 
coast of Florida. James Logan, Penn's representative in 
the colony and for a time president of the council, wrote 
much and well on many subjects, although little has been 
printed. His translation of Cicero's De Senectute (i 744), 
however, was published during his lifetime ; as was also 
his Cato' s Moral Dis ticks Englished in Couplets (1735), 
in which the following couplet is perhaps the neatest : — 

Slip not the Season when it suits thy Mind ; 
Time wears his Lock before, is bald behind. 1 

William Smith's^ General Idea of the College of Mirania 
(1753) is noteworthy because of its Addisonian style, its 
anticipation of some modern ideals in education, and the 
form of a romance in which the whole is cast.^ In addi- 
tion to these and other general writers, there were in 
Philadelphia, during the first half of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, several men, such as Henry Brooke, Aquila Rose, 
Samuel Keimer, James Ralph, George Webb, and Jo- 
seph Shippen, who had the knack of throwing off poems 
of more or less grace and spirit, and who testify to the 
existence, thus early, of literary atmosphere and Hterary 
ambitions in the Quaker City. A poet of greater ability 
and of much greater promise was Thomas Godfrey 
( 1 736-1 763). Most of his Juvenile Poems are tame 
echoes of the conventional pastoral, elegy, and ode as 
these were then written in England ; but a few of them, 
especially "^The Court of Fancy, were evidently inspired 

to be better Natur'd, Milder, and more tender Hearted than those born 
in England." — An Account, etc., p. 42, in N. Y. Hist. Soc.'s facsimile. 

1 Cato's Moral Disfic/is, p. 14, ed. 1735. 

2 More's Utopia seems to have been its model. 



42 LITERATURE IN THE OTHER COLONIES. 

by the earlier and fresher English poets, Chaucer in 
particular, and have a good deal of melody, fancy, and 
vividness. His best work, however, is ^The Prince of 
Farthia, a tragedy showing the influence of both the 
Elizabethan and the Restoration Drama, and, in spite of 
many faults, containing much real poetic power.^ God- 
frey's native endowment in poetry seems to have been 
far greater than that of any American writer before him, 
and it is probable that if he had lived to maturity he 
would have become a very considerable poet. His 
friend and editor, Nathaniel Evans, also wrote poems of 
some promise, having a certain freedom and largeness of 
utterance, but his life was cut short in 1767. 

The early writings of Benjamin Franklin fall within 
the colonial period, but the consideration of them will, 
for convenience, be deferred to a later page. 

1 It was acted in Philadelphia, in 1767. 



II. THE REVOLUTIONARY 
PERIOD. 

(1765-1789.) 

HISTORICAL EVENTS. 



Stamp Act, 1765 ; repealed, 1766. 

Duties on tea, paper, etc., 1767. 

Boston Massacre, 1770. 

Boston Tea-Party, 1773. 

Boston Port-Bill, 1774. 

First Continental Congress, 1774. 

Engagements at Lexington and 

Concord, April 19, 1775. 
Battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775. 



Declaration of Independence, 1776. 
Burgoyne's surrender, 1777. 
French alliance, 1778. 
Surrender of Corn wallis, 178 1. 
Peace treaty, 1783. 
Shays's Rebellion, 1786-1787. 
Constitutional Convention, 1787. 
Constitution adopted, 1788. 



LITERATURE IN ENGLAND. 



Johnson, 1709-1784. 

Sterne, 1713-1768. 

Goldsmith, 1728-1774. 

Churchill's satires, 1761-1764. 

Poems of "Ossian," 1762. 

Romantic novels : Castle of 
Otranto, 1762; Old English 
Baron, 1772; Vathek, 1784. 



(collected 



Cowper, 1731-1800. 
Letters of " Junius ' 

edition), 1772. 
Hume, 1711-1776. 
Burke, 1729-1797. 
Gibbon, 1737-1794. 
Crabbe's early poems, 1775-1785. 
Blake's early poems, 1783-1789. 



In speaking of the literature of the Colonial Period it 
was necessary to observe geographical lines, because the 
several groups of colonies were so isolated and had so 
little in common. The hterature of the Revolutionary 
Period has more unity, for the colonies were now driven 
together by a common danger and animated by a common 
spirit. The attempt of Great Britain to tax Americans by 
act of Parhament welded thirteen scattered and diverse 
commonwealths into one nation and made possible the 
beginnings of a national literature. 

43 



44 THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 

The same forces which gave a certain unity to the 
Revolutionary literature also gave to much of it a political 
cast, the struggle for freedom leaving little time or energy 
for purely Hterary pursuits. And indeed the conditions 
otherwise were not yet ripe for much successful cultivation 
of belles lettres or any of the fine arts. The colonies or 
states were still comparatively isolated and diverse. The 
Southern planter and the Northern farmer represented 
distinct types ; the descendants of fighting Scotch High- 
landers in North Carolina were of quite another spirit 
from the peaceful Quakers of Pennsylvania ; the numer- 
ous Dutch, Swedes, and Germans in the Middle States 
gave to those communities a complexion noticeably differ- 
ent from that of the Anglo-Saxon communities of New 
England and Virginia ; Catholicism was still dominant in 
Maryland, Episcopacy in the South, Congregationalism 
in the North. And communication between the states 
was difficult. In an age without railroads, steamships, 
or telegraphs, Virginia was practically much farther from 
Massachusetts than it is to-day from California ; the stage- 
coach running between New York and Philadelphia, which 
was called the Flying Machine because of its surprising 
speed, took two days to make the trip ; and " more mails 
are now each day sent out and received in New York 
than in Washington's time went from the same city to all 
parts of the country in the course of half a year." ^ The 
population of three or four millions was still largely agri- 
cultural.^ As late as 1786 Boston had only 15,000 in- 
habitants. New York 23,000, and Philadelphia 32,000. 

1 McMaster's A History of the People of the United States, Vol. I., p. 41. 

2 At the beginning of the war, it has been estimated, the population 
was 2,750,000. The census of 1790 showed a population of 3,929,214, 
of which only three per cent lived in cities of 8000 inhabitants or more. 



STATE PAPERS. 45 

Life in the states as a whole was still plain, and in many 
parts rude. Education in the South languished. Great 
public libraries and art collections were unknown. Even in 
the older regions America was yet too young to have fine 
architecture, painting, or sculpture ; and a few miles back 
from the waters of the Atlantic the country was '^little 
better than a great wilderness.'* ^ Yet literary taste and 
literary talent were showing signs of improvement and 
growth. Literary ideals continued, of course, to be bor- 
rowed from England. But although there was to be, for 
many years yet, a great deal of imitation, much of it 
slavish enough, the average of ability in letters was higher 
than it had been in colonial days, while a few writers 
showed large talent and some originality. 

The political literature of the period may mostly be 
comprised under State Papers, Speeches, and Essays. 
The State Papers, consisting of petitions, remonstrances, 
declarations of rights, etc., form a body of exceedingly 
able documents, noble in spirit, soHd in thought, strong 
and dignified in style. " When your lordships look at the 
papers transmitted us from America," said Chatham in 
1775, "when you consider their decency, firmness, and 
w^isdom, you cannot but respect their cause." ^ The 
D ecla ration of Independence^ written by Thomas Jeffer- 
son, has, however, somewhat tarnished with time, in 
matter and manner alike having some tinge of the sopho- 
moric. But its bold enunciation of great principles, its 
lofty passion for liberty, and its elastic, ringing style 
stirred the souls of its first readers, and have stirred the 

1 McMaster's A History of the People of the United States, Vol. I., p. 3. 

2 Hansard's The Parliamentary History of England, Vol. XVIII., 
p. 155, note. 



46 THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 

souls of millions since ; for Jefferson poured into it a 
great faith in a great ideal — Democracy.^ 

The Speeches of the period, including debates, formal 
orations, and political sermons, maintained a high general 
level, and in a few instances reached a lofty pitch of 
eloquence. The greatest orator of the North was Jam£S 
Otis of Massachusetts. Of his speech against writs of 
assistance, in 176 1, the first bugle-note of the coming 
Revolution, John Adams (who heard it) says that it was 
characterized by " such a profusion of learning, such 
convincing argument, and such a torrent of subHme and 
pathetic eloquence, that a great crowd of spectators and 
auditors went away absolutely electrified." ^ The great- 
est Revolutionary orator of the emotional type was 
Patrick Henry of Virginia, inferior to many of his 
contemporaries in learning, judgment,^ and practical 
efficiency, but endowed with the gift of passionate elo- 
quence. His famous speech before the Virginia Con- 
vention, in 1775, rivals the oratory of Chatham for terse 
strength and fiery logic. 

For ten years before the war of arms began, all America 
rang with a war of words. It was the day of the Political 
Essay in pamphlet or newspaper. The country was a 
house divided against itself; for the Loyalists, a numer- 
ous, wealthy, and cultured class, vigorously opposed all 
measures which tended toward a rupture with the mother 
country. In the writings put forth by both sides the in- 

1 Jefferson's emphasis upon abstract ideals, borrowed from contem- 
porary French thought, was doubtless a valuable supplement to the 
Anglo-Saxon instinct of most of his countrymen to rest wholly upon 
historic precedent, 

2 John Adams's Works, Vol. X., p. 183. 

3 In 1788 he hotly opposed the adoption of the Constitution. 



POLITICAL ESSAYS. 47 

tellectual force, political knowledge, and literary ability 
are on the whole surprisingly great ; but a rapid and very 
imperfect survey must here suffice. 

In the summer of 1764, amidst the general alarm 
caused by the report that Parliament intended to lay new 
and heavier taxes upon the colonies, James Otis again 
came forward as the champion of American freedom with 
a pamphlet entitled, T he Rights o f the British Colonies 
Asserted and Proved, in which he declared that " no 
parts of his Majesty's dominions can be taxed without 
their consent," ^ and urged that the colonies be allowed 
to send representatives to ParHament. In the next year 
appeared a reply, purporting to be A Letter from a Gentle- 
man at Halifax to His Friend in Rhode Island^ and argu- 
ing that the colonies were no worse off than the majority of 
the inhabitants of Great Britain itself, who (under the system 
then prevailing) had no voice in electing members to Parlia- 
ment. It was soon discovered that the author was really 
a Newport lawyer, Martin Howard ; whereupon a mob 
gutted his house, smashed his furniture, and forced the 
hated Tory himself to flee for refuge to a British man-of- 
war. The fierce intolerance of the Puritan was not yet dead 
even in the colony of Roger WilHams. Otis's own career 
was cut short four years later by a brutal assault which 
finally left him a mental wreck.^ The political services of 
another Massachusetts patriot, Samuel Adams, were of 
much longer continuance ; " for nearly a third of a cen- 
tury," says Professor Tyler, he " kept flooding the com- 
munity with his ideas, chiefly in the form of essays in the 

1 Page 99, ed. 1765. 

2 On the day of the battle of Bunker Hill he escaped from his attend* 
ants and took part in the fight. He was killed by lightning in 1783. 



48 THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 

newspapers." ^ His industry was indefatigable. A friend 
who often had to pass his house after midnight has said 
that the study lamp was usually burning, and " he knew 
that Sam Adams was hard at work writing against the 
Tories."^ His style was practical and plain, but very 
effective ; " every dip of his pen," said Governor Bernard, 
one of his victims, " stung like a horned snake." ^ 

The repeal of the Stamp Act was followed by a lull in 
pamphleteering. But the imposition of new duties upon 
glass, paints, tea, and other prominent imports, soon 
stirred up the strife anew. Again the printing presses 
groaned, again the paper legions flew to wordy war. 
The most celebrated of the essays called forth by the new 
imposts were the Letters of a Farmer in Pennsylvania to 
the Inhabitants of the British Colonies^ by John Dickin- 
son, which appeared first in a Philadelphia newspaper in 
1 76 7-1 768, and were read throughout America and 
Europe. They deserved their fame, for nothing of the 
kind could be more admirable. They were written in 
neat, clear-cut style, showed easy mastery of the funda- 
mental principles of government, and while firm and 
courageous were moderate and fair-minded. But the ten- 
sion increased from year to year; and in 17 74-1 7 75 the 
stream of essays and pamphlets became a flood. " The 
Westchester Farmer," in a series of pamphlets, laid about 
him right and left, as with a flail. He showed the injury 
to the farmers which must result from the recent agree- 
ments to stop trading with England; denounced Con- 
gress as an illegal and tyrannical body ; and cried, " If I 
must be devoured, let me be devoured by the jaws of a 

1 The Literary History of the American Revolution, Vol. II., p. 9. 

2 Wells's Life of Samuel Ada??ts, Vol. I., pp. 202, 203. 
s John Adams's Works, Vol II., p. 425. 



POLITICAL ESSAYS. 49 

lion, and not gnawed to death by rats and vermin."^ 
These pamphlets were the most powerful that the Loyal- 
ist side produced, sinewy in style, electrically charged 
with passion, wit, sarcasm, and logic. They heartened 
the Tories. They put the Radicals on their mettle. 
The two ablest replies, A Full Vindication of the Meas- 
ures of the Congress^ and The Farmer Refuted, were both 
from the pen of Alexander Hamilton, the most preco- 
cious statesman of America, if not of the world. They 
were written when he was only eighteen years old, an 
undergraduate at King's College, yet they showed such 
learning, political wisdom, and general maturity that they 
were commonly attributed at first to much older and 
well-known public men. Meanwhile an answer of quite 
another sort was preparing. The " Farmer " was (prob- 
ably rightly) suspected to be Samuel Seabury, an Epis- 
copalian clergyman of Westchester, N. Y., and a mob 
finally pillaged his house, insulted his daughters, and 
dragged him off to prison. Hardly less powerful and 
even more adroit than Seabury's pamphlets were the 
letters of " Massachusettensis," by Daniel Leonard, a 
prominent lawyer and politician, which at about the same 
time began to appear in a Boston newspaper. John 
Adams, who answered them, had already won some fame 
as a political essayist by his arguments in 1 765 against 
the Stamp Act; and his reply to ^* Massachusettensis '' 
had wide circulation in America and was several times 
republished in Europe. But a sterner reply was at the 
door. Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill converted 
many an able pamphlet into waste paper, and (in the 

1 Free Thoughts on the Proceedings of the Continental Congress, p. 36, 
ed. 1775. 

£ 



50 THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 

words of Adams himself) " changed the instruments of 
warfare from the pen to the sword." ^ 

Yet the most famous of all the poKtical essayists of the 
period had not yet entered the lists. Thomas Paine, 
coming to America in 1774 a needy adventurer, soon 
gained some acquaintance with the Revolutionary leaders, 
and rapidly absorbed the spirit of the hour. Early in 
1776 appeared his pamphlet Com7non Sense, which ran 
over the land like wildfire, 120,000 copies being sold 
within three months. It was a bold plea for inde- 
pendence, and the effect was tremendous. It came in 
the nick of time. The bloody events of the preceding 
year had prepared the way ; and this clever appeal, 
presenting in homely fashion, with remarkable lucidity 
and raciness of phrase, the great advantages v/hich would 
result from America's taking her station among the 
independent nations of the earth, was just what was 
wanted to determine wavering minds. Paine also wrote 
a series of inspiriting pamphlets called The Crisis, which 
came out at intervals during the war. 

The political essays of the period under review found 
a worthy close in The Federalist, a series of papers which 
appeared in 1 787-1 788, during the great struggle over 
the adoption of the Constitution.^ The authors were 
John Jay^ James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton^ 
the last-named writing the largest part.^ The immediate 

1 Works ^ Vol. II., p. 405. 

2 The series was published, in whole or in part, by several New York 
papers ; and was reprinted as a book in 1788. 

3 There has been much dispute as to the authorship of the various 
numbers. It is agreed that Jay wrote Nos. 2-5, 64; Madison Nos. 10, 
14, 37-48 ; and Hamilton the rest, with the exception of Nos. 18-20, 49- 
58, 62, 63. These last are in dispute, some scholars maintaining that 
Hamilton cooperated with Madison in Nos. 18-20 and wrote Nos. 49-58, 



HISTORIES AND NARRATIVES. 51 

purpose was to remove objections to the proposed consti- 
tution ; but the discussion took a broad range, and the 
fundamental principles of popular government were pre- 
sented with 5uch clearness, precision, and suppleness of 
style, and such keenness and sagacity of thought, that 
The Federalist has long been a political classic. 

No hard-and-fast line divides the political writings of 
the period from those of a more purely literary character. 
Between the two extremes stand several classes of works 
partaking of the nature of both, while even the poetry 
and other forms of pure literature often have for sub- 
jects the political events of the times. 

Governor Thomas Hutchinson, " the ablest historical 
writer produced in America prior to the nineteenth 
century,"^ in the third volume of The History of the 
Province of Massachusetts Bay brings the record down to 
1 7 74 ; and even while treating of the turbulent times in 
which his house was sacked by a mob,- and he himself 
finally driven from the governorship, he maintains, for 
the most part, the calmness, accuracy, and fairness which 
mark the genuine historian. Histories of the Revo- 
lution were written by William Gordon, David Ram- 
say, and Mrs. Mercy Warren; all are respectable, 
and as contemporary records have considerable histori- 

62, 63, and others that Madison was the sole author of all the numbers 
in dispute. See P. L. Ford's edition of The Federalist, and The Ameri- 
can Historical Review, April and July, 1897. 

1 Tyler's The Literary History of the American Revolution, Vol. II., 

p. 394. 

2 The manuscript of his second volume was thrown into the street; 
most of the scattered leaves were, however, recovered, stained with mud 
and torn by the tramplmg feet of men and horses. Some of the sheets 
are now preserved, says Professor Tyler, in the Massachusetts State 
Library. 



52 THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 

cal value, but their literary merit is not great. More 
interesting are the Narratives of Captivity by Ethan 
Allen, Thomas Andros, * Henry Laurens, and others. 
Colonel Allen, famous for taking Ticonderoga ^' in the 
name of Jehovah and the Continental Congress," was 
equally robust as a writer, describing with much crude 
vigor his experiences as a prisoner in the hands of the 
British from 1775 to 1778. Andros's picture of life-in- 
death on the " Old Jersey," a British prison-ship and veri- 
table pest-hole, in which he says that not less than eleven 
thousand Americans perished, is sickeningly graphic; 
and the story of his final escape is thrilling. Laurens, 
while on his way to Holland as United States commis- 
sioner, was captured by a British man-of-war, in 1780, 
and imprisoned in the Tower of London for more than a 
year ; his account of his life there, amid hardships and 
temptations, shows the dignified courage and incorrupti- 
ble patriotism of a lofty spirit. The published Letters 
of the Revolutionary period are generally well written. 
Washington always writes with a certain formality, indeed, 
characteristic of the times and the man, but also with a 
calm strength and noble largeness. Jefferson's letters 
are more lively and flexible. John Adams and his wife 
Abigail had a gift for letter-writing, their letters to one 
another, in particular, being full of the little details and 
personal touches which give to this form of Hterature its 
peculiar charm. From letters to Journals and Auto- 
biographies is an easy step. Jefferson's Autobiography 
has less of personal interest than might be desired, deal- 
ing largely with his public career j but it is written in his 
usual easy, elastic style, and contains many interesting 
passages. The Journal of John Woolman, a Quaker, is 



LITERARY ESSAYS. 53 

pervaded by -a spiritual purity, delicacy, and calm that 
made Charles Lamb exclaim, " Get the writings of John 
Woolman by heart, and love the early Quakers,"^ while 
Whittier beautifully says of it that one is " sensible, as he 
reads, of a sweetness as of violets." ^ 

In the sheltered retreats of the magazine the Literary- 
Essay put forth its feeble foliage in peace even while 
War was devastating the world without. Thus The Penn- 
sylvania Magazine for September, 1775, contained, along 
with a picture of the battle of Bunker Hill, an essay ^x\.- 
\\\\Qd, Reflections upon the Married State ; and two months 
later, when Washington was cooping up the British in 
Boston and husbanding his powder, an essay on Frugal- 
ity, The Spectator papers were the models for the Amer- 
ican Steeles and Addisons, who, while catching the moral 
propriety and literary restraint of the originals, too often 
missed their grace, humior, and dehcate satire. These 
essays, however, like their prototypes, frequently took the 
form of character-sketches, dreams, fables, or tales, and 
were then sometimes written with a good deal of vivacity, 
fancy, and wit.^ In a time of such political ferment, it 
was not to be expected that the essay or fable would 
altogether avoid political subjects. In The Providence 
Gazette for November 10, 1764, when the menace of the 
Stamp Act was already troubling the country, there ap- 
peared a ^ Dream of the Branding of Asses and Horses,"^ 



■ 1 A Quaker's Meeting, in Essays of Elia. 

2 Introduction to Woolman's yournal, p. 34. 

3 See the Old Bachelor papers (some of which are by Francis Hop- 
kinson) in The Pennsylvaiiia Magazine for 1775 ; and '^'Number Five of 
The Retailer papers in The Columbian Magazine for 1788. 

4 The article has no title in the original, being merely a letter to the 
pubhsher. 



54 THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 

which in a humorous way hit the political nail squarely 
on the head, showing that ^* none but asses would stand 
still to be branded," and that American horses in partic- 
ular, being ^' all of the English breed," would surely kick 
up their heels with great vigor. Ten years later, just 
about the time of the assembling of the first Continental 
Congress in Philadelphia, there was published in that 
city A Pretty Story, by Francis Hopkinson, a very enter- 
taining allegory of the Old Farm and the New Farm, of 
a Nobleman and his Children, of the Nobleman's Steward 
(the king's ministers) and the Nobleman's Wife (Parlia- 
ment), and how the wicked Steward got a tax laid upon 
Water Gruel (tea), and in many other ways vexed the 
Nobleman's Children upon the New Farm.^ Some time 
between the adjournment of Congress and the outbreak 
of war, there came out ^A Cure for the Spleen, an essay 
in the form of a dramatic conversation, setting forth the 
Tory view of the situation with so much liveliness, humor, 
and keenness that it may still be read with a good deal of 
pleasure. Far remoyed (until near their close) from all 
this political hurly-burly are the ^Letters from an Amer- 
lean Farmer (1782), by J. Hector St. John Creve- 
CCEUR, a Frenchman by birth, which are really pictorial 
essays upon life in America. They describe with deli- 
cate sentiment and poetic ideahsm the happy life of the 
^' American Farmer " ; sketch vividly the inhabitants of 
Nantucket, their simple customs and dangerous occupa- 
tions ; draw a powerful picture of the harsher side of 
slavery as seen in South Carolina ; give some most inter- 
esting facts about birds and snakes in the New World ; 

1 It has been thought that Hopkinson took for his model Arbuthnot's 
History of John Bull, 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 55 

and conclude with the distress brought upon the peace- 
loving Pennsylvania " Farmer " by the American Revolu- 
tion. Refinement and literary grace pervade the book, 
which has real charm, although its exaggerated sensi- 
bility, and distress at suffering even in a great cause, 
give it a certain effeminacy like that of the contemporary 
literature of sentiment in Germany, France, and England. 
^ Benjamin Franklin began to write long before the 
Revolution, but an account of his work has been 
deferred until now that it might be presented as a whole. 
His wonderful career, from a poor printer's boy to a 
world-famous man of science and an ambassador at the 
courts of kings, is too familiar to need emphasis here.^ 
Franklin's versatility was marvellous. He was an epitome 
of his century; its shrewd common-sense, its scientific 
spirit, its literary talent within a certain range, its limited 
spirituality, its moral coarseness, are all in high degree 
exemplified in him. His services as a statesman would 
alone have made him famous, and so would his contri- 
butions to science. His literary fame, although great, is 
secondary, resting chiefly upon a few writings which are 



1 Franklin was born in Boston in 1706 ; removed to Philadelphia in 
1723, where he soon began to prosper as printer and publisher and rapidly 
rose to great influence in the colony, founding the American Philo- 
sophical Society and the University of Pennsylvania ; in 1752, by his 
famous kite experiment, demonstrated that lightning is electricity; 1753- 
1774, was deputy postmaster-general for British America; 1757-1762, 
1764-1775, acted as agent for Pennsylvania (and a part of the time 
for Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts also) at the British court; 
was elected to Congress in 1775, and helped to draft the Declara- 
tion of Independence; 1776-1785, resided in France as ambassador, 
playing a prominent part in winning French aid and in making a 
favorable peace treaty with England; 1785-1788, was president of Penn- 
sylvania ; sat in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 ; died in Phila- 
delphia in 1790. 



56 THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 

the embodiment of practical wisdom ; of the higher im- 
agination, as of the higher spirituality, Franklin knew 
nothing. His writings fill many volumes, but the bulk 
consists of scientific papers, political papers, and letters. 
The style of the scientific articles is admirable for its 
purpose — lucid, precise, and compact. In his political 
writings Franklin struck many a good blow for his country, 
effectively combining plain truth and powerful satire with 
urbanity, humor, and wit. His Examination before the 
House of Commons in 1766, which he printed as a pam- 
phlet, did much to secure the repeal of the Stamp Act. 
His Rules for Reducing a Great Empire to a Small One 
and An Edict by the King of Prussia, which were pub- 
lished in England in 1773, made a great hit and were 
widely read. Franklin was the best letter-writer of his 
day in America. In comparison with Washington's uni- 
form epistolary style, Franklin's is striking for its flexi- 
bility — dignified in weighty matters, in familiar letters 
playful as a kitten, frequently witty and fanciful, pleasing 
always by clearness, naturalness, and ease. He also tried 
his hand at the literary essay and sketch. In early years 
he published, in Philadelphia periodicals, the Busy-Body 
papers and other Addisonian essays, which are compara- 
tively commonplace. Many years after, while living in 
France, he threw off, for the amusement of some of his 
new friends, several " bagatelles," such as The Ephemera 
and The Whistle, delightful for their French lightness of 
touch and their good-natured but sage philosophy of life. 
Franklin's literary fame rests chiefly, however, upon \{v^Poor 
Richard's Almanac (i 733-1 758) 2xA\{\'$^ Autobiography} 
He was not the first to make almanacs the vehicle of enter- 
1 The first five chapters were written in 177 1 ; the rest, in 1784-1789. 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 57 

tainment an<l moral instruction ; but he so far outdid his 
rivals that they are nearly forgotten, while he still lives in 
the sayings of Poor Richard. He did not invent all his 
proverbs ; but whether adapting or creating he had an 
unsurpassed gift for putting bits of practical wisdom in a 
pithy and striking way, being in this respect a prose-cousin 
to his great contemporary, Pope.^ The Autobiography 
is one of the most interesting books ever written, holding 
the attention by the triple cord of its limpid, racy style, 
magnificent common-sense, and self-revelation of a great 
man. Franklin was the first great American to dwell in 
Europe, and he did an immense deal to remove the Old 
World illusion that the " provincials '* were necessarily an 
inferior race. For in the plain old philosopher, whom it 
was quite impossible to muddle, outwit, browbeat, patro- 
nize, or ignore, the European recognized an equal, and yet 
was conscious of an indefinable something that- was new : 
the stock was pure English, but the sap, sucked up from 
a strange soil, was pure Yankee ; yet the tree was not two 
trees but one, and it bore goodly fruit. 

The Poetry of the Revolutionary period was abundant 
and varied. The stirring political and martial events of 
the times naturally called forth many * Popular Songs 
AND Ballads, most of which were crude in form and ex- 
travagant in tone, full of partisan abuse and brag. But 
the very number and heat of these productions, which 
were largely anonymous, show how deeply the country 
was stirred ; and the Muse of History may therefore 
shelter bantlings which the Lyric Muse must disown. 

1 For Franklin's indebtedness to Poor Robin, an English comic alma- 
nac, and to Ray's A Collection of English Proverbs, see McMaster's life 
of Franklin (American Men of Letters series), pp. loi, 112. 



58 THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 

But verses on other themes were plenty enough. The 
Pennsylvania Magazine, for instance, in the very year of 
Lexington and Bunker Hill, abounded in poems about 
" Delia *' and " Strephon," odes on Solitude, wails of 
" Hopeless Love," sprightly fables, and solemn " Thoughts 
. on the Universe." 

Let a few of the minor poets stand for their whole 
choir. Phillis Wheatley,^ a negro slave brought from 
Africa to Boston in 1761 at the age of seven or eight, 
under the care of an indulgent mistress developed re- 
markable aptitude for letters, and in a few years wrote 
very respectable verse in the conventional manner of the 
day. In 1773 a volume of her poems was published in 
London ; the following lines, upon the effect of Homer's 
poetry, are a favorable specimen : — 

Great Sire of verse, before my mortal eyes, 
The lightnings blaze across the vaulted skies, 
And, as the thunder shakes the heav'nly plains, 
A deep-felt horror thrills through all my veins.^ 

Peter Markoe's Miscellaneous Poems (1787) are com* 
'monplace ; odes to Faith, Hope, Penn, Shakspere, etc., 
show the influence of Gray and Collins, two fables were 
perhaps inspired by Gay, while several poems in the 
pentameter couplet have Pope for godfather. The fol- 
lowing quatrain, On a Beautiful Lady with a Loud Voice^ 
is probably the best thing in the book : — 

That Chloe should surprise our hearts, 
And quickly lose them — v^^here's the vi^onder ? 
Jove's lightning from her eyes she darts. 
And from her tongue she rolls his thunder.^ 

1 She finally married a Mr. Peters, and is sometimes referred to as - 
Phillis Wheatley Peters. 

2 Poems, p. 10, ed. 1773. ^ Miscellaneous Poems, p. 22, ed. 1787. 



POETRY. 59 

The poetry of Joseph B. Ladd (1786) shows some prom- 
ise, being occasionally rather pretty and light, and making 
several attempts to use distinctively American material. 
His poems,-like many others of the period, by their en- 
thusiasm for " Ossian '^ also show that the tendency in 
English poetry toward Romanticism was beginning to 
affect American poetry too. In the works of David 
Humphreys, military aide to Washington, and afterward 
minister to Spain, the influence of Pope and Goldsmith 
is, however, still predominant. But Humphreys wrote 
the pentameter couplet with some grace and a good deal 
of strength, and his poetry has a certain originality. The 
subjects of all his principal poems are American;^ he 
praises the vastness of nature in the New World ; sketches 
Indian Hfe, though briefly and as a dark background ; 
draws pretty pictures of American crops growing, and of 
winter pleasures ; and describes with much spirit the 
American whale fishery. 

The most notable poets of the period, however, were 
John Trumbull, Timothy Dwight, Joel Barlow, and Philip 
Freneau. The first three, residents of Connecticut and 
graduates of Yale College, remind us that Hterary pre- 
eminence had passed, for a time, from Boston and Phila- 
delphia to New Haven and Hartford j^ and with Freneau 

1 Such as The Armies of the United States (1780), The Happiness of 
America (1786), The Industry of the United States (1794), etc. 

2 Hartford was for a while the residence of Trumbull, Barlow, Hum- 
phreys, Lemuel Hopkins, and other so-called " Hartford Wits." The 
four named wrote The Anarchiad, a keen and amusing satire upon 
Shays's Rebellion, depreciated paper money in Rhode Island, and other 
dangerous symptoms of the times in the chaotic period between the end 
of the Revolution and the adoption of the Constitution. The poem 
appeared first in The New Haven Gazette, in 1786-1787, was reprinted in 
other newspapers, and contributed its part to the growing conviction 
that a stronger central government was necessary. 



6o THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 

they mark the growth of a more purely literary cult than 
had before appeared in America. 

John Trumbull (1750-1831), lawyer and judge, was 
almost incredibly precocious, learning to read at two and 
a half years, composing verses at four, and at seven pass- 
ing the examination for admission to Yale College, which 
he entered at thirteen. His first considerable poem, 
* The Progress of Dulness (1772 and 1773), in vivacious 
octosyllabic couplets, satirizes college education, fops, 
and coquettes by sketching with much vigor and wit the 
careers of Tom Brainless, Dick Hairbrain, and Miss Har- 
riet Simper.^ But the war was soon to draw the young 
poet's talents into its vortex. In 1774 the Boston Port- 
Bill called forth from him An Elegy on the Times ; and 
in the next year he flung himself headlong into the 
welter with the first half of his most powerful poem, 
''^M'Fingaly a mock-epic satire on the Tories. In 
this first part. Squire M'Fingal, a Tory, stoutly har- 
angues a town-meeting, which grows more and more 
turbulent. In the second half (appearing in 1782) 
M'Fingal is tarred and feathered and paraded about the 
town in a cart ; that night, safe in his cellar, he wofully 
describes to his assembled Tory friends ^a vision in which 
there has been revealed to him the complete triumph of 
the Revolution. M'Fingal was immensely popular in 
its day, and has been many times reprinted since. It 
has perhaps been overpraised. A good deal of the 
interest in a contemporary political satire is necessarily 

1 Trumbull's odes, elegies, and fables of the same period, in which 
the influence of Gray, Collins, Goldsmith, and Gay is manifest, are 
comparatively commonplace and feeble. His series of essays, The 
Meddler and The Correspo7ide??t, published in Boston and New Haven 
newspapers in 1769-1770, are sprightly. 



TRUMBULL AND DWIGHT. 6i 

transient; furthermore, the poem contains many me- 
diocre passages, and the whole is prolix. Yet it has 
many passages of keen wit, broad humor, or crushing 
satire, and there is an enjoyable rush and vigor through- 
out. It has also a refreshing smack of originality, in spite 
of its manifest indebtedness^ in verse, style, and general 
method, to Butler's Hudihras and the satires of Churchill. 
Timothy Dwight (^752-1817), president of Yale 
College from 1795 till his death, pubHshed in 1785 
"^The Conquest of Canaan, an epic in eleven books. 
The Bible narrative of Joshua's wars is greatly amplified 
by imaginary details, and a love story of Irad and Selima 
is added. Several digressions comparing sundry charac- 
ters in the poem to heroes of the American Revolution, 
and the considerable space given to America in Book 
Tenth (where an angel reveals the future to Joshua), are 
examples of the way in which contemporary events and 
the growing sense of national greatness touched all sorts 
of literature during the Revolutionary period. The Con- 
quest of Canaan is an honest, respectable piece of work, 
but of genius or even of high talent it has not a glimmer. 
The worst defect of the poem, next to its hopeless medi- 
ocrity, is the incongruity between the early, rude times 
depicted and the conventional eighteenth-century man- 
ner throughout ; the Gibeonites sing a hymn to tl;e sun 
in the style of the Essay on Man, and the damsel who 
instructs them in the true faith is made to talk thus : -— 

" Far other God," replied the fair, " demands 
My vocal transports, and my suppliant hands." ^ 

One of the best features of Dwight's would-be epic, its 
occasional pretty pictures of quiet scenes in nature, is 

1 The Conquest of Canaan, IL, 121, 122, ed. 1785. 



62 THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 

found also in his other principal poem, Greenfield Hill 
(1794), which is frankly in imitation of the manner of 
Spenser, Thomson, Goldsmith, and other English poets. 
It contains some distinctively American touches in its 
description of a New England village and in its pride 
in the United States as the happiest land ; nearly half 
a century before Emerson, in The American Scholar^ 
struck more successfully the same note, Timothy Dwight 
had written. 

Ah then, thou favour'd land, thyself revere ! 
Look not to Europe, for examples just 
Of order, manners, customs, doctrines, laws, 
Of happiness, or virtue.^ 

Joel Barlow (1754-1812) was a politician as well as 
poet, and served as minister to France in 1811-1812. 
His interest in public affairs appears also in his poems. 
The Prospect of Peace (1778) glows with enthusiasm for 
America as the future leader of the world. A Poem 
spoken at Commencement at Yale College, in 1781, deals 
largely with American affairs ; and a prefatory note says 
that passages in it are " taken from a larger work which 
the author has by him unfinished." The work referred 
to. The Vision of Columbus (1787), was therefore a poem 
of slow growth, and it was still further expanded into the 
bulky * Columhiadoi 1807. Barlow's epic was thus a great 
and serious labor, into which he put his life-thought ; but 
unfortunately it is a serious labor for the reader too. The 
first book is a rhymed geography, describing in detail the 
whole continent ; the subsequent books contain the con- 
quest of Mexico and Peru, the settlement of North 

1 Greenfield Hill, I. 233-236, ed. 1794. 



BARLOW AND FRENEAU. 63 

America, the French and Indian War, the Revolution, a 
retrospective view of the progress of the world from 
Creation, and a vi^on of the future, in which Tennyson's 
^^ Parliament of Man " is anticipated. The style is heavy, 
stiff with Latin derivatives,^ and often bombastic. The 
pentameter couplets are mechanically correct, but have 
little real melody. In brief, The Columbiad is a stage- 
coach epic, lumbering and slow. It is valuable chiefly 
as a courageous attempt at greater things in American 
Hterature ; and it failed, not because its author had no 
talent (for he had a great deal), but because epics de- 
mand genius. Much more successful is his lively little 
poem '^The Hasty-Pudding (1793), which describes very 
prettily the growing Indian corn and the husking-bees, 
and tells with mock-solemn precision just how the 
pudding should be eaten. 

Philip Freneau (175 2-1 832), of Huguenot stock, a 
graduate of the college of New Jersey, a sea-captain and 
editor, like Trumbull was soon diverted from pure litera- 
ture into poHtical satire. His satires have less imagina- 
tion than Trumbull's, and more abuse and bitterness. 
In The British Prison- Ship, containing vigorous though 
repulsive description, occur the lines. 

Some miscreant Tory, puff' d with upstart pride, 
Led on by hell to take the royal side.^ 

And elsewhere Cornwallis is called "reptile," "swine," 
" Satan's first-born son " ; his army, a " host of Beelze- 
bubs " ; England, " the vengeful dragon's den." In 

1 In the description of Washington crossing the Delaware (VI. 156- 
169) occur the phrases, " muriat flakes," •' nitrous form," " petrific sky,'' 
and " waves conglaciate." 

2 Poems, p. 197, ed. 1786. 



64 THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 

more genial moods Freneau sometimes mingled humor 
with satire, as in The Political Balance, where Jove, using 
two moons as spectacles, sees Great Britain as " a blot 
on the Ball."^ The non-political satires, as The Village 
Merchant, The Sabbath-Day Chase, and A Journey from 
Philadelphia to New York, abound in humor and are 
often very lively. In the satiric and didactic poems the 
influence of Pope and Churchill is apparent. But much 
of Freneau's poetry is of other kinds, and shows other 
influences. His commonplace poems of moralizing senti- 
ment about nature and human life are modelled on Gray's 
Elegy, The Hermit of Saba and Pictures of Columbus^ 
dramatic in form, have lines in which one hears echoes 
of the Elizabethan dramatists, as in these words of the 
dying Columbus : — 

The winds blow high : one other world remains; 
Once more without a guide I find the way; . . . 
To shadowy forms, and ghosts, and sleepy things, 
Columbus, now with dauntless heart repair.^ 

Milton's early poems affected his graceful and musical 
The Power of Fancy ; and the playful-sad philosophy of 
life in the poems of Herrick and the Cavalier poets 
reappears in The Parting Glass, On a Honey Bee, and 
*The Wild Honeysuckle, ^The House of Night, a work 
of really powerful though somewhat crude imagination, 
is all compact of the same gruesome Romanticism which 
had been recently coming into English poetry and prose 
fiction. But Freneau was no slavish imitator. On the 
contrary, in poems of fancy and imagination he was the 
most original and truly poetical poet in America before 

1 Poems ^ p. 261, ed. 1786. 

2 Miscellaneous Works, pp. 29, 30, ed. 1788. 



FRENEAU. 65 

the nineteenth century. His gift for phrasing is illus- 
trated by the fact that two excellent English poets have 
borrowed from him.^ In Campbell's O'Connor's Child 
(1810), the line, 

The hunter and the deer a shade ! ^ 

is taken without change from Freneau's most successful 
poem on Indian subjects, The Indian Burying Ground: 

By midnight moons, o'er moistening dews. 
In vestments for the chace array'd, 
The hunter still the deer pursues, 
The hunter and the deer — a shade.^ 

And a line in Marmion (1808),^ 

And snatched the spear, but left the shield ! ^ 

changes but slightly a line in the American poet's verses 
to the memory of the soldiers who fell at Eutaw Springs : 

, They saw their injur'd country's woe;- 

• The flaming town, the wasted field; 

Then rush'd to meet the insulting foe; 
They took the spear — but left the shield,^ 

The Wild Honeysuckle is the high-water mark of Ameri- 
can poetry of the eighteenth century, in deHcacy of feel- 
ing and felicity of expression being at least the equal of 
Bryant's To the Fringed Ge7itian, When such lines were 
possible in the very infancy of the national life, there was 
no reason to despair for the future of American literature. 

1 Professor Tyler was the first, so far as I know, to point out this fact 

2 Poetical Works, p. 59, Aldine ed., 1891. 
8 Miscellaneous Works, p. 189, ed. 1788. 

4 Introduction to Canto III. 

5 Scott's Poetical Works, p. 'j-j^ Globe ed., 1890. 
^ Poems, p. 229, ed. 1786. 

F 



66 THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 

Of the Tory satirists Jonathan Odell (i737-i8i8),an 
Episcopalian clergyman of old Massachusetts stock, was 
by far the best. His satires, upon the model of Dryden, 
Pope, and Churchill, are poHshed, keen, and powerful. 
They reveal intense party bias and venom, but are mani- 
festly sincere in their opposition to a war which the 
writer regarded as needless, treasonable, cruel, and hope- 
less. His pen-portraits of the Revolutionary leaders, 
though unjust, are strong. Of Congress he says, — 

.... since Creation's dawn, 
Earth never yet produc'd so vile a spawn; ^ 

of John Jay, — 

.... to him these characters belong; 
Sure sense of right, with fix'd pursuit of wrong; 
An outside keen, where malice makes abode, 
Voice of a lark and venom of a toad; ^ 

of General Mifflin, — 

Fierce Mifflin foremost in the ranks was found : 

Ask you the cause? He owed ten thousand pound; ^ 

and of Washington, — 

Was it ambition, vanity, or spite, 

That prompted thee with Congress to unite ? 

Or did all three within thy bosom roll, 

** Thou heart of hero with a traitor's soul? " 

Go, wretched author of thy country's grief, 

Patron of villainy, of villains chief. * 

One more literary species, the Drama, began to de- 
velop in America during the Revolutionary period.^ Pon- 

1 The Word of Congress, in The Loyalist Poetry of the Revolution^ 
p. 50, ed. 1857. 

2 The American Times, Part I., p. 4, ed. 1780. 

3 The Word of Congress, in The Loyalist Poetry of the Revolution, 
p. 44, ed. 1857. 

4 The American Times, Part I., p. 12, ed. 1780. 

5 English plays had been acted in New York in 1732. In 1749-1852 



THE DRAMA. 67 

teach : or the Savages of America (1766), supposedly by 
Robert Rogers, an American officer in the French and 
Indian War, portrays with much realism the deceit and 
cruelty of the whites in their dealings with the red men ; 
but the Indians themselves are not at all true to life, 
Pontiac talking and acting like a European statesman, 
and his son Philip being a sort of Edmund-Iago. The 
Disappointment; or the Force of Credulity (1767), by 
Andrew Barton, is a rollicking comedy about buried 
treasure, and contains real though sometimes coarse 
humor. Mercy Warren's The Adulateur (1773) deals, 
under a thin disguise, with the Boston Massacre. Her 
comedy The Group (1775) makes scornful fun of the 
leading New England Loyalists. She also wrote two 
commonplace historical plays, The Sack of Rome and 
The Ladies of Castile ; they have some strength of style, 
but are often bombastic, and the blank verse is wooden. 
The Fall of British Tyranny (1776), of uncertain author- 
ship, recounts in prose the events of the struggle thus 
far, and satirizes the Tories and British with considerable 

the plays of Shakspere, Dryden, Otway, and others were performed in 
Philadelphia, New York, and Annapolis, by a company consisting in 
part of professionals. Hallam's London company played in Williams- 
burg, Va., in 1752-1753; in New York, in 1753-1754; in Philadelphia, 
in 1754. Reorganized, it acted in New York in 1758, 1761-1766; in 
Philadelphia, 1759; in Annapolis, 1760; in Newport, 1761 ; in Provi- 
dence, 1762. A permanent theatre was built in Philadelphia in 1766 ; 
in New York, 1767; in Annapolis, 177 1 ; in Charleston, S. C, 1773. 
During the occupation of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia by Brit- 
ish troops, plays were given by the officers. Congress, by recommenda- 
tions to the states in 1774 and 1778, did all it could to close the theatre 
elsewhere ; in 1774 the American company left Philadelphia for Jamaica ; 
but in 1781 the first playhouse in Baltimore was erected. After the 
Revolution professional players cautiously resumed operations — in 
Philadelphia, in 1784 ; in New York and Savannah, in 1785 ; in Mary- 
land and Virginia, in 1786. 



68 THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 

rude vigor. Of much more literary merit are ^The Battle 
of Bunker's- Hill (1776) and The Death of General 
Montgomery (1777), by Hugh H. Brackenridge ; both 
are reading dramas only, consisting of long speeches in 
rather stiff blank verse, but they show considerable lit- 
erary culture and are inspired by an ardent and noble 
patriotism. The Blockheads (1776), making coarse fun 
of the fright of the British officers in Boston after the 
battle of Bunker Hill; The Battle of Brooklyn (1776), 
by some Tory or British hand, portraying the American 
soldiers and generals as cowards and grossly immoral ; 
The Motley Assembly (1779), a few loosely connected 
scenes of small force, directed against Tories and Whig 
turncoats; and The Blockheads (1782), an opera, ex- 
pressing the Loyalist dislike of the French alliance as 
dangerous to liberty, and pining for friendship once 
more with "dear Albion" — all deserve mention merely 
as mirrors of the strife and passion of the times. In The 
Patriot Chief {I'jS^), said to be by Peter Markoe, we 
return to the realm of pure literature. The scene is 
Lydia; the main characters are Otanes, Araspes, Ismene, 
and the Lydian king ; the plot is the conventional one of 
political ambition, love, and mistaken identity; and the 
style is in general high-flying and stagey. The Drama in 
England itself was now in a bad way, and had been for 
long ; it was not to be expected that plays of high merit 
could yet be written in the New World. The first rich 
harvests of American Hterature were to be reaped in 
other fields ; and after two centuries of preparation the 
reaping-time was now not far distant. 



THE PERIOD OF THE REPUBLIC 



f 




'%. 



% 



FOREWj 




The great task of C(^ 
was to settle the At 
governments, and 
union. The gr^ 
extend the nai 
Ocean, carve 
them into t 
the incub 



Revolutionary America 
^oard, establish provincial 
^independence and national 
^of the Republic has been to 
Knain to Mexico and the Pacific 
'^ states fi:om this territory and bring 
throttle secession, rid the nation of 
Svery, furnish an asylum for the poor and 
oppress^^^Bhe Old World, and play a leading part in the 
develog^H^ of modern industrial civilization. We have 
alread}^Pen how slight and crude American literature was 
during the first two centuries. Even the literature of the 
RepubHc is still a minor product in comparison with the 
nation's achievements in other fields. The United States 
is even yet too young, too crass, too much absorbed in 
the struggle with physical nature, it has not even yet 
enough of the mellowing that comes with time, of the 
enriching and beautifying of the national life that wait 
upon venerable historic associations, ancient legend, and 
the noble leisure of an old civilization, to produce the 
greatest art. American literature at its best is still much 
below English and ItaHan and Greek Hteratures at their 
best. As a whole it is inferior even to English literature 
of the nineteenth century. No false patriotism or personal 
affection for a favorite author should blind us to these 
facts. Tennyson, Carlyle, Thackeray, Shelley, Wordsworth, 

71 



72 THE PERIOD OF THE REPUBLIC. 

Scott, — what six American poets and prose-writers shall 
we place on an equality with these men? And how puny 
are our greatest compared with the giants of the ages — 
Goethe, Milton, Shakspere, Dante, Virgil, Sophocles, 
Homer. But we may, nevertheless, justly be proud of 
the literature of the Republic. The day of Wigglesworth 
and Barlow has forever gone. The day of Irving, Poe, 
Longfellow, Hawthorne, Lowell, and Emerson has come ; 
and in them and their fellows we have given beautiful 
gifts unto men. 

Even within the period of the Republic, however, the 
years of literary bloom have been all too few. Since the 
War of the Revolution four generations have come 
upon the scene. In the first generation, ending approxi- 
mately with the War of 1812, American literature shared 
in the general weakness and crudeness of the young 
nation's life, although it shared likewise in the promise of 
coming strength. In the second and third generations, 
ending approximately with the Civil War, lived and 
wrote most of the authors who first lifted our literature 
out of the dust, and gave it an honorable though subordi- 
nate place among the literatures of the world. In the 
fourth generation, ending with the century, American 
literature has been characterized by fresh beginnings and 
a new spirit rather than by great achievement. Our 
literature, like our country, seems to be standing upon 
the threshold of a new era. Just what that era will be, 
no man can say; but there is reason for the faith that 
it will not be unworthy of the maturing life of a great 
people. 



III. THE PERIOD OF THE 
REPUBLIC. 

( I 789-1 900.) 

THE LITERATURE OF THE TIME OF NATIONAL 
BEGINNINGS (1789-1815). 

HISTORICAL EVENTS. 



Washington's administrations, 

1789-1797. 
Outbreak of the French Revolu- 
tion, 1789. 
First tariff, 1789. 

Funding the national debt, 1790. 
Indian wars, 1790-1794, 18 11. 
Invention of the cotton-gin, 1793. 
Whiskey Insurrection suppressed, 

1794. 
Jay's treaty with Great Britain, 

1794. 
Adams's administration, 1797- 

1801. 
Preparations for war with France, 

1798. 
Kentucky nullification resolutions, 

1799. 
Death of Washington, 1799. 



Washington City becomes the capi- 
tal, 1800. 
Jefferson's administrations, 1801- 

1809. 
War with Tripoli, 1801-1805. 
Louisiana Purchase, 1803. 
Lewis and Clarke's expedition to 

Pacific, 1 804-1 806. 
Fulton's steamboat on the Hudson, 

1807. 
The Embargo, 1807-1809. 
Importation of slaves forbidden, 

1808. 
Madison's administrations, 1809- 

1817. 
First steamboat on the Ohio and 

the Mississippi, 1811. 
War with England, 1812-1815. 
Hartford Convention, 18 14. 



LITERATURE IN ENGLAND. 



Burns's poems, 1786-1802. 

Ann Radcliffe's romances, 1789- 

1797. 
Burke's Reflections on the French 

Revolution, 1790. 
Blake's later poems, 1791-1794. 
Roger's Pleasures of Memory , 1792. 
Godwin's Political Justice, 1793; 

Caleb Williams, 1794. 



Poems by Southey, 1794-1814. 

Lewis's romances and tales, 1795- 
1808. 

Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyri- 
cal Ballads, 1798. 

Landor's Gebir, 1798. 

Campbell's Pleasures of Hope, 
1799; Gertrude of Wyoming, 
1809. 



73 



74 THE LITERATURE FROM 1789 to 181 5. 



Poems by Moore, 1800-1812. 
Narrative poems by Scott, 1805- 

1813. 
Crabbe's Parish Register, 1807; 

Borough^ 18 10. 



Poems by Wordsworth, 1807 ; Ex- 
cursion, 1 8 14. 

Jane Austen's novels, 1811-1818. 

Byron's Childe Harold, I. and II., 
1812; Eastern tales in verse, 
1813-1814. 



During the first quarter-century of its existence the 
young Republic was beset with peculiar dangers, but the 
character of the men at the head of affairs ensured a suc- 
cessful issue. Washington, Adams„ Jefferson, and Madi- 
son as Presidents, Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury, 
Marshall as Chief Justice, and others in various positions 
of power were master workmen in statecraft. They 
manifested a large wisdom in interpreting and adminis- 
tering the fundamental law of the land amid perplexing 
new problems; asserted the authority of the national 
government in the face of tendencies to insurrection and 
secession in South and North alike; avoided useless 
entanglements abroad during the fever of the French 
Revolution and the Napoleonic wars ; when it became 
necessary to strike a foreign foe, struck hard ; established 
the tottering national credit upon a bed of rock ; by tariffs 
secured ample revenues, and incidentally encouraged the 
development of the country's magnificent resources for 
mining and manufactures ; set up territorial governments 
in the West ; and brought five new states into the Union. 
All this was a task for giants, but there were giants for 
the task. By the end of the War of 181 2 the new ship of 
state had "found herself" and was ready for a longer 
voyage over stormier seas. 

In population, settlement of old territory, and acquisi- 
tion of new the advance was also great. The census of 
18 10 showed a population of more than seven millions. 



GENERAL CONDITIONS. 75 

or nearly double that of 1790; the frontier line was 
pushed steadily back toward the Mississippi ; and the 
Louisiana purchase threw open the immense tract be- 
tween the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains. This 
rapid growth in numbers and territory involved a like 
growth in wealth and industry. The North raised and 
exported large quantities of cereals. At the South, rice 
and sugar-cane were proving valuable products ; and since 
the invention of the cotton-gin, cotton ^' was king already, 
. . . the crop exported in 18 10 being worth over fifteen 
million dollars. '^ ^ Cotton and woollen manufactures 
steadily increased, although they were still in their 
infancy. Manufactures of wood and leather prospered. 
Mining and metal industries were yet in a backward 
state, but in common with all manufactures they were 
feeling the stimulus of the tariff, the embargo, and the 
war with England. The ocean commerce of neutral 
America flourished mightily during the long-continued 
European wars. The coasting trade was also growing, 
and the great rivers and lakes bore steadily increasing 
freights even before the introduction of the steamboat. 
But traffic by land was still difficult and costly ; " to 
haul a ton from Philadelphia to Pittsburg . . . cost a 
hundred and twenty- five dollars ; " ^ the construction of 
turnpikes and canals therefore received much attention, 
until the coming of the locomotive revolutionized over- 
land traflic. 

Social, intellectual, and moral conditions differed widely 
in different sections. New England was still the home 

1 Schouler's History of the United States, Vol. IL, p. 215. 

2 McMaster's A History of the People of the United States ^ Vol. 1 11^ 
p. 463. 



76 THE LITERATURE FROM 1789 to 18 15. 

of independent religion and sober morals, of solid intellect, 
universal education, and careful industry, although the 
Puritan grimness had moderated and dwindled into a 
rather prim propriety. The Middle States were still 
the seat of a mixed population, New York in particular, 
a city of many tongues, having already something of a 
cosmopolitan character ; Albany was a staid half-Dutch 
town ; Philadelphia retained its reputation for quiet in- 
telligence ; Baltimore and Washington were gay society 
centres ; while throughout the rural districts might be 
found the honest and industrious if rather dull Swedish, 
German, and Dutch farmers. In the South the growth 
of slavery was confirming the aristocratic division of 
society into masters, slaves, and '' poor whites." The 
South was also still deficient in schools and cities, 
although Charleston remained a centre of intelligence 
and gayety, and Savannah, Raleigh, and Richmond were 
rising into some prominence. But the old hospitahty 
of the Southern gentleman had only refined with time ; 
honor between man and man, and chivalry toward woman, 
ennobled Southern society ; and plantation Hfe, with its 
habits of self-reliance and command, continued to be a 
training-school for leaders in national affairs. Our new 
possessions in the Southwest, including the old city of 
New Orleans, had brought into the Union the new ele- 
ments of French gayety and grace, of grave Spanish 
courtesy and romance, elements destined to furnish rich 
subject-matter for our literature in future years. On the 
Father of Waters and his giant tributaries was fast develop- 
ing a peculiar and picturesque type of life, which, however, 
would have to wait two generations or more for adequate 
expression in letters ; while along the Western frontier 



A TRANSITION PERIOD. 77 

and in the far West, the squatter, the hunter, the ex- 
plorer, and the Indian were making material for the 
literature which they could not write. 

From thi^ brief survey it will be seen that the condi- 
tions in the United States as a whole were still unfavorable 
for literature and the fine arts. The energies of the 
people were largely absorbed with the problems of 
physical or political existence ; and the great majority 
of the population lived in the country, away from the 
stimulus and culture of cities.^ Nevertheless, in portions 
of New England and the Middle States the conditions 
were better than they had ever been before. Cities of 
considerable size now existed. In 18 10 the population 
of Boston was 33,250; of Philadelphia, 57,488; of New 
York, 96,373; and in these and other centres a good 
measure of wealth and leisure, of social gayety and re- 
finement, of culture, knowledge, and literary intelligence, 
was common. Old colleges were growing, new colleges 
were springing up, newspapers and magazines abounded 
more and more.^ Yet even in the cities great libraries, 
art collections, circles of artists and men of letters, and 
the general atmosphere helpful to the literary and artistic 
life were largely or altogether lacking. American schools 
of painting, sculpture, and music did not exist,^ and 

1 In 1810 only five per cent of the population lived in cities of 8000 
or more inhabitants. Furthermore, the exodus of Tories after the 
Revolution had robbed city and country ahke of many of the most 
cultured citizens. 

2 In 1810 there were 359 newspapers, including 27 dailies. Among 
the magazines were The Port Folio, Philadelphia, 1801-1827; The 
Monthly Register, Charleston, S. C, 1805 ; and The Analectic Magazine^ 
Philadelphia, 1813-1820. 

3 Benjamin West (1738-1820), John S. Copley (1737-1815), Gilbert 
Siuart (1755-1828), Charles R. Leslie (1794-1859), and other American 



yS THE LITERATURE FROM 1789 to 1815. 

American literature as a whole was still sadly deficient in 
originality, beauty, and power. And yet the literature of 
this time of beginnings has significance and promise, and 
cannot be passed by carelessly if one would understand 
the historical development of American literature. It 
was closely linked with the immediate past ; in some ways 
it prophesied and prepared for the better future ; and 
parts of it had considerable intrinsic merit. Between 
the literature of the Revolutionary period and that of 
the second generation under the Republic how great the 
difference. The literature of the intervening generation 
affords a partial explanation of the change, not so much 
by its achievement as by its tendencies and attempts. 

In Revolutionary days America was already a land of 
Orators, and under the Republic the brood naturally 
multiplied apace. Contemporary English oratory was 
the model for American, solidity of thought and stateli- 
ness of manner rather than brilHance or vivacity being 
conspicuous features, although the tendencies of the 
more nervous American temperament had already begun 
to manifest themselves. In these days flourished the 
Fourth of July oration, too often compact of patriotic 
bombast and cheap self-glorification. In Congress were 
many effective speakers and a few real orators, among 
whom Fisher Ames of Massachusetts and John Ran- 
dolph of Virginia were prominent. Ames, a man of fine 
mind and high character, hating exaggeration and rant, 
had an oratorical style that was nervous, tastefully ornate, 
and intense with restrained passion. Randolph, a de- 
painters studied and lived chiefly or wholly abroad, and their style of 
painting was essentially English. Of American sculptors and musicians 
there were none worthy of mention. 



ORATORS AND ESSAYISTS. 79 

scendant of .Pocahontas, excelled in sarcasm ; his oratory 
had little grace, but it bit Hke an acid and was often 
brilliant though erratic. Among the Biographies, John 
Marshall's Z//"^ of Washington (1804-180 7) and Wil- 
liam Wirt's Life and Character of Patrick Henry (181 7) 
hold places of honor. Essays, political, scientific, philo- 
sophical, religious, moral, and literary, appeared from time 
to time, but were for the most part of no great merit. 
Thomas Paine's Rights of Man (1791-1792), in reply to 
Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution^ is a lucid 
and spirited, if somewhat shallow, exposition of the new 
political philosophy. His Age of Reason (i 794-1 795), 
much read and more feared in its day, although it antici- 
pated some of the conclusions of modern Biblical schol- 
arship, is often carping and flippant, and its racy style 
has not sufficed to keep it alive. The essays of Noah 
Webster,^ Count Rumford, and Benjamin Rush can be 
only mentioned in passing. Wirt's Letters of th.e Brit- 
ish Spy (1803) in neat and graceful style draws pictures 
of men and manners in Virginia, including the once 
famous sketch of the BHnd Preacher, in which the self- 
conscious "sensibility" of Sterne, Mackenzie, and the 
rest of the sentimental school, lingers still. The best 
and most celebrated literary essays of the time, the Sal- 
magundi papers by Irving and Paulding, will be more 
conveniently described on a later page. 

In the above classes of prose works was nothing par- 
ticularly promising or new. But in Poetry the Romanti- 
cism of Wordsworth, Scott, and Byro» quickly made 
itself felt, so that later, when the greater American poets 

1 Webster's Speller (dating from 1783) , which supplanted The New 
England Primer, is almost literature by reason of its admirable fables. 



8o THE LITERATURE FROM 1789 to 18 15. 

took up the lyre, it was already vibrating with the richer 
melodies of the new poesie. In addition, in a few in- 
stances distinctively American material was handled with 
greater success than ever before, and emancipation from 
provincial dependence in literature thereby advanced a 
step, though a short one. But the intrinsic worth of 
most of the poetry is small, perhaps even less than in the 
preceding period. Of Religious, Moral, and other 
Didactic Verse, chiefly upon the model of Akenside, 
Rogers, and Campbell, there was no lack. Most of it is 
as dull as it is pious, virtuous, and learned ; it points 
toward happiness, but affords the reader little on the way, 
although the verse and style have usually some finish. 
As representative may be mentioned The Power of Soli- 
tude (1804), by Joseph Storv, and The Fains of Memory 
(1808), by an anonymous author. Of much higher 
merit are the didactic poems of Robert Treat Paine 
(1773-1811), a man of versatile and brilliant parts but 
dissipated character. His lyrics, orations, and dramatic 
criticisms all show ability. But his best work is The 
Ruling Passion^ a poem delivered before the Phi Beta 
Kappa at Harvard in 1797, frankly on the model of Pope, 
but so witty, vigorous, and pointed that it does honor to 
its original. Fops he calls 

. . . sweet elves, whose rival graces vie, 
To wield the snuff-box, or enact a sigh. 
The miser 

Still clings to life, of every joy bereft; 
His god is gold, and his religion theft ! 

The pedant. 

Wrinkled in Latin, and in Greek fourscore, 
With toil incessant, thumbs the ancient page, 
Now blots a hero, now turns down a sage. 



POETRY. 8i 

Poems of Fancy, Sentiment, Humor, Wit, and Satire 
may be loosely grouped together as a second class. The 
poems of fancy and sentiment are often pretty, although 
many are stale ; some of the humorous and witty verses 
are still enjoyable ; and the satires occasionally hit hard 
with keen weapons. Miscellaneous Poems (1804), by 
Susanna H. Rowson, are slight but show facility, espe- 
cially in the songs. The Breechiad (1807), by '^Ther- 
esa," in lively pentameter couplets, tells women how to 
rule their husbands. The anonymous author of Boston 
(1803), a satire of considerable force and knack at 
phrasing, makes fun of the literary affectations of that 
ever literary city : — 

Long odes to monkies, squirrel elligies, 
Lines and acrostics on dead butterflies; . . , 
Elegiac lays such taste and truth combine, 
The lap-dog lives and barks in every line. 

Some of the lyrics in William Cliffton's Poems (1800) 
have a good deal of fancy, flow, and feeling for poetic 
words ; The Group, a satire, is forcible and finished. 
The Country Lovers in Origmal Poems (1804), by 
Thomas G. Fessenden, anticipates Lowell's The Com^tin' 
and is a good sample of the broadly humorous verse : — 

" Miss Sal, I 's going to say, as how, 

We '11 spark it here to night, 
I kind of love you, Sal — I vow, 

And mother said I might. . . . 
My father has a nice bull calf, 

Which shall be your's, my sweet one, 
'T will weigh two hundred and a half," — 

Says Sal, ** Well, that 's a neat one. 

G 



82 THE LITERATURE FROM 1789 to 18 15. 

Your father 's full of fun, d' ye see, 

And faith, I likes his sporting, 
To-Send his fav'rite calf to me. 

His nice bull-calf a courting.'* 

Fessenden's Terrible Tractoration (1803), a Hudibrastic 
satire concerning medical squabbles, had a great run in 
America and England, but is now unreadable in spite of 
its rough vigor. By far the best poem of fancy is The 
Sylphs of the Seasons (18 13), by Washington Allston, 
the artist/ containing such dehcate work as this : — 

Now, in the passing beetle's hum 
The Elfin army's goblin drum 

To pygmy battle sound; 
And now, where dripping dew-drops plash 
On waving grass, their bucklers clash, 
And now their quivering lances flash. 

Wide-dealing death around. . . , 

Or seen at dawn of eastern light 
The frosty toil of Fays by night 

On pane of casement clear. 
Where bright the mimic glaciers shine, 
And Alps, with many a mountain pine. 
And armed knights from Palestine 

In winding march appear. 

In the third class — Romantic Tales and Ballads — 
the spirit of the new English poetry blows full upon us. 
Stories of adventure and love in distant ages and climes, 



1 Allston (1779-1843) was a native of South Carolina, a graduate of 
Harvard, and had studied art abroad, where he was resident in 1813 ; 
but R. H. Dana says ( The North American Review, 18 17) that The 
Sylphs was written in this country, he having seen it in manuscript. 
After 1818 Allston lived in Boston and Cambridge; his lectures on art 
were published in 1850. 



ROMANTIC TALES AND BALLADS. 83 

ballads in which distressed maidens, hermits with a 
mysterious past, interesting and pathetic lunatics, and 
sundry phases of the supernatural are utilized for poetic 
purposes, show that in America as in England the 
dynasty of Pope, Young, and Goldsmith was fast giving 
place to that of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, and Byron. 
In conception and execution these poems, like all imita- 
tions, have no lasting value. But it meant a good deal 
for the future of American poetry that it should be 
liberated thus early from the limitations of eighteenth- 
century verse. Oudbi, an Indian Tale (1790), by 
Sarah Morton, has occasionally some good lines, such 
as these describing a wounded Indian : — 

A ghastly figure issued from the wood, 
Writhing with anguish, like the wounded fawn. 
Covered with darts, and stain'd with clotted blood. 

In John B. Linn's Valerian (1805), narrating the adven- 
tures of a Roman noble shipwrecked on the shores of 
the Caspian Sea, lines Hke the following show the new 
freedom of style and fresh feeling for nature : — 

Some mossy trees bent over his rude cot. 
And swinging to the winds their giant arms, 
Made music like the dashing of the sea. 

The account of a boar-hunt is spirited, and a part of 
the description of the boar is capital : — 

. . . he champed the foam 
Which dropped down roping from his crooked tusks. 

Hubert and Ellen (1812), by Lucius M. Sargent, a 
story of love, sorrow, and madness, in its too-conscious 
simplicity reminds one of Wordsworth's poorer style, and 
the whole poem is a sort of diluted Ruth, In Joseph 



84 THE LITERATURE FROM 1789 to 181 5. 

HuTTON^s Leisure Hours (181 2), the romantic tendency 
appears strongly in ballads on Crazy Jane, the Saracen, 
and the Maid of Savoy, and in a paraphrase of a scene 
from Lewis's The Castle Spectre, The Broken Harp 
(1815), by Henry C. Knight, contains a ballad. Poor 
Margaret Dwy, much like Wordsworth's Ruth in subject 
and manner : — 

Poor thing ! she knows not what she will; 

She '11 feel the cold, and not complain; 
She '11 beat her bosom blue and chill, 

And love the pleasure of the pain. 

Some of the Poems on Nature and Common Life — 
the fourth class — show a trend toward the realism of 
Wordsworth and Crabbe. In Alexander Wilson's The 
Foresters (1809), the humble home of a Pennsylvania 
Dutch farmer is pictured with courageous truth of 
detail : — 

There washed our boots, and, entering took our seat, 

Stript to the trowsers in the glowing heat. 

The mindful matron spread her table near, 

Smoking with meat, and filled with plenteous cheer. . . . 

The wheel, the cards, by fire-light buzzing go; 

The careful mother kneads her massy dough ; 

Even little Mary at her needle sits, 

And while she nurses pussy, nicely knits. 

In its neat perspective this sketch of a landscape as seen 
from a mountain-top resembles passages from Cowper : — 

Below, at dreadful depth, the river lay. 
Shrunk to a brook 'midst little fields of hay; 
From right to left, where'er the prospect led, 
The reddening forest like a carpet spread; 
Beyond, immense, to the horizon's close, 
Huge amphitheatres of mountains rose. 



POEMS ON NATURE. 85 

The following description of Niagara, however crude, 
has the merit of keeping its eye on the object : — 

Saw its white torrents undulating pour 

From- heaven to earth with deafening, crashing roar; 

Dashed in the wild and torn abyss below, 

'Midst dazzling foam and whirling storms of snow, 

While the whole monstrous mass, and country round, 

Shook as with horror at the o'erwhelming sound ! 

Within this concave, vast, dark, frowning, deep, 

Eternal rains and howling whirlwinds sweep. 

Other of the nature poems combine the new accuracy 
of observation with poetic beauty and often with fancy. 
The eye of the painter is manifest in this stanza from 
Allston's The Sylphs of the Seasons, already men- 
tioned : — 

Or lur'd thee to some beetling steep 
To mark the deep and quiet sleep 

That wrapt the tarn below; 
And mountain blue and forest green 
Inverted on its plane serene, 
Dim gleaming through the filmy sheen 

That glaz'd the painted show. 

Henry C. Knight, whose The Broken Harp has been 
referred to above, in The Caterpillar (contained in 
Poems, 182 1 ), addresses the *^ cousin reptile" as 

. . . a frozen fellow thou, 
This sultry day, whole bedded in a muff. 

And A Summer'' s Day in the same volume has several 
pretty lines : — 

Soft murmur pebbly rills at stilly dawn; 

The nestling breezes plume their dew-bent wings. . . • 

Gray mists now drizzle from the smoky rocks. . . . 



86 THE LITERATURE FROM 1789 to 181 5. 

Tottering on tripods, milkmaids soothe the kine, 
While rains a white shower in the foaming pail. . . , 
Mourning the sun, blue-bells have shut their cup; 
The bat wheels round and round on leathern wing; 
Reynard creeps out, on pilfer'd eggs to sup; 
And chiming frogs their shrilly concert sing. 

It may be said, and truly, that these last lines are 
echoes of Warton and Collins and other pioneers in 
Romanticism rather than of Wordsworth. And, in 
general, American poets in the years now under con- 
sideration curiously combine the old, the newer, and 
the newest within a few pages. In neighboring poems 
if not in the same poem, Pope jostles Gray, and Gray 
jostles Wordsworth, the poet meanwhile seeming quite 
unconscious that divers children struggle within him for 
mastery. So it had been in EngHsh literature not long 
before. 

Much of the verse of the time falls into the fifth and 
last class — Political and Patriotic Poems. It was a 
period of intense and bitter party-strife between Federal- 
ists and Democrats. Satire in verse was of course pressed 
into service, and many and stout were the blows dealt on 
either side. There is more abuse than wit in the mouths 
of most of these pugnacious children of the Muse 
Militant, and we need not tarry with them long. The 
Democratiad (1795) and The Guillotina (1796), anony- 
mous Federalist satires on the Democrats for their 
opposition to Jay^s treaty, are keen, bitter, and intensely 
partisan. A few lines from the first will give a sufficient 
taste of the better class of political satire of the day : — 

Far to the south, where on her oozy bed, 

Like some sick sea-nymph Charleston bows her head, 



PATRIOTIC SONGS AND ODES. 87 

Her languid sons collect in solemn state, 
To join their sages in the grand debate. 
There like the vision in the sacred book, 
Old Gadsden's dry bones in a whirlwind shook, 
But o'er the rest chief justice Rutledge stands, 
Stamps with his feet, and boxes with his hands. 
And 'mid the applauses of the gather'd crowd, 
Shews what a judge can do by bawling loud. 

Among other of the more celebrated satires of the 
day were The Political Green-House, by Richard Alsop, 
Lemuel Hopkins, and Timothy Dwight, a review of the 
year 1798, rapping the Democrats, with much livehness 
and some wit, for their sympathy with the French Revo- 
lution ; The Porcupiniad (1799), by Mathew Carey, a 
coarse but powerful attack upon WilHam Cobbett, an 
Englishman, the editor of Porcupine's Gazette and an 
extreme FederaHst, who, like many Federalists, was sus- 
pected of wishing to set up monarchy in the United States ; 
and Olio (1801), a collection of satires on the Federalists, 
particularly Cobbett and Alexander Hamilton, the latter 
being raked severely for his confessed personal immorality. 
Poems on the Embargo, including one by the boy Bryant, 
were numerous. 

Another division of poems of the fifth class consists of 
patriotic songs, odes, elegies, etc. Washington's death 
was doubly a calamity by reason of the flood of dull 
poems which it occasioned. Fourth of July was the in- 
spiration of many noisy odes, only less dreadful than the 
modern cannon-cracker as a means of celebrating the 
day. There was, furthermore, a permanent fund of 
sweUing patriotic pride, which on sundry occasions ex- 
ploded in more or less metrical dithyrambs, crammed 



88 THE LITERATURE FROM 1789 to 181 5. 

with much silly stuff, such as these lines from Jonathan 
M. ^-^^PiLiJ^ Miscellaneous Poems (1801) : — 

Sage Adams for wisdom, with Pallas may vie, 
And Washington equals a Jove ! 

To this time, however, belong two songs which, 
although their poetic merit is small, still hold a place 
in the nation's memory. Hail Columbia , by Joseph 
HoPKiNSON, was first sung at the Chestnut Street theatre 
in Philadelphia, in 1798, when war with France was 
threatening. The_ Star- Spangled Bannej, by Francis 
Scott Key, was written after the bombardment of Fort 
McHenry in 18 14. 

The War of 181 2 called forth several narrative poems, 
in which the patriotism is usually more abundant than 
the poetry. The Field of Orleans (1816), however, by 
Joseph Hutton, has some spirit and local color : — 

Though rifles rattle, peal on peal, 

And skies resound wdth crash of steel, 

Fair Orleans, thou art safe ; for, lo ! 

Jackson prepared to meet the foe. 

His darting eye-beams brightly sweep 

Around his trench of cotton heap. . . . 

" Haste, Morgan, haste ! that stream be crossed, 

And thence the iron death be tossed ! 

Remember how in times retired, 

What rage that other chief inspired. 

When stern upon the field he stood, 

Like the roused lion lapped in blood; 

And let each boasting Tarleton see, 

Great Morgan's soul renewed in thee ! " 

A more remarkable poem is The Battle of Niagara 
(1818), by John Neal (i 793-1876), who was to have a 
long and creditable though rather erratic career as a 



NARRATIVE POEMS. 89 

dramatist, novelist, and writer for the magazines. The 
Battle of Niagara is evidently the work of a young man. 
It contains many crude lines ; as a whole is obscure, 
tumultuous, and incoherent ; and the influence of Byron, 
Moore, and Hunt is too apparent in diction, verse, and 
general manner. But in spite of crudeness and lack of 
high originality, the thing is nevertheless a genuine poem, 
full of energy, vision, and sensuous beauty. Amidst the 
tame commonplaces of the time it rises up like a brilliant 
though imperfect flower. How much of the large, savage 
beauty of the virgin American solitudes is in these lines : — 

Peace to thy bosom, dark Ontario ! 

Forever thus, may thy free waters flow, 

In their rude loveliness ! Thy lonely shore 

Forever echo to the sullen roar 

Of thine own deep ! Thy cliffs forever ring 

With calling wild men, in their journeying — 

The savage chant — the panther's smothered cry — 

That from her airy height, goes thrilling by ! 

Is there not something of Shelley's delicacy and of 
Keats's fresh and luxurious sense for beauty in this 
description of a summer night? 

It is that hour of quiet ecstacy, 

When every ruffling wind, that passes by 

The sleeping leaf, makes busiest minstrelsy : . . , 

When dry leaves rustle, and the whistling song 

Of keen-tuned grass, comes piercingly along : 

When windy pipes are heard — and many a lute, 

Is touched amid the skies, and then is mute : . . . 

When all the garlands of the precipice, 

Shedding their blossoms, in their moonlight bliss, 

Are floating loosely on the eddying air. 

And breathing out their fragrant spirits there : 



90 THE LITERATURE FROM 1789 to 181 5. 

And all their braided tresses in their height, 
Are talking faintly to the evening light. 

For rush and vividness the following account of a night 
attack by a troop of American horse equals almost any- 
thing in Scott or Byron : — 

'T is a helmeted band ! from the hills they descend 

Like the monarchs of storm, when the forest trees bend. 

No scimitars swing as they gallop along: 

No clattering hoof falls sudden and strong : 

No trumpet is filled, and no bugle is blown : 

No banners abroad on the wind are thrown : . . . 

But they speed like coursers whose hoofs are shod, 

With a silent shoe from the loosen'd sod. . . . 

Away they have gone ! — and their path is all red. 

Hedged in by two lines of the dying and dead ; 

By bosoms that burst unrevenged in the strife — 

By swords that yet shake in the passing of life — 

For so swift had that pageant of darkness sped — 

So like a trooping of cloud-mounted dead — 

That the flashing reply, of the foe that was cleft, 

But fell on the shadows those troopers had left. 

Interest in the Drama rapidly developed with the 
growth of cities. Many plays were written or adapted 
by American playwrights, and acted in New York, Phila- 
delphia, Baltimore, Charleston, and Boston- — for even 
in Puritan Massachusetts the law against theatres was 
repealed in 1793.^ The first American play performed 
in public by a company of professional actors was The 
Contrast, by Royall Tyler (1757-1826), which was 
acted in New York in April, 1787. It is a prose 
comedy, showing the superiority of the honest man to 

1 Plays had been given in Boston shortly before, but they were 
advertised as " Moral Lectures." 



PROSE FICTION. 91 

the brilliant rake ; it introduces successfully the Yankee 
as a stage-character ; and the dialogue is often bright 
and lively. Tyler's May Day ^d.'^ acted in 1787; and 
A Good Spec, or Laiid in the Moon, in 1797. A 
more proHfic playwright was William Dunlap (1766- 
1839). His The Father of an Only Child, acted in 
New York in 1789, was followed by many other plays, 
some on American subjects and others based on or 
translated from Enghsh, French, and German romances 
and plays.^ His Leicester, acted in 1794, was (he says) 
the first American tragedy produced upon the stage. 
Dunlap had genuine humor, and in both comedy and 
tragedy was a clever playwright ; but his comedies lack 
literary finish, and even the tragedies have little poetical 
elevation. Other writers for the stage need not be dis- 
turbed in their well-earned repose. Dramas intended 
for the closet only, including several on subjects from 
American history or life, were numerous ; most of them, 
however, are scarcely better adapted for reading than for 
acting, and even to enumerate their titles and authors 
would be an unprofitable weariness to the flesh. 

The most interesting and in some respects the most 
significant part of the Hterature of the time was the Prose 
Fiction. A tendency toward this species of composition 
had begun to show itself in the Revolutionary period. 
The transition from true narrative to fictitious, from the 
descriptive and narrative essay to the moral or allegor- 
ical tale, is an easy one, although in America the step 
was delayed by the Puritanic distrust of novels, which 
were supposed by many to be one of the pleasant devices 

1 Kotzebue was a favorite storehouse for American playwrights at 
this time. 



92 THE LITERATURE FROM 1789 to 1815. 

of Satan. It has already been seen that early in Revolu- 
tionary days the fable or tale was used as a political 
engine. The same line was continued after the war in 
The Foresters, by Jeremy Belknap, which narrates the 
colonizing of America and the revolt of the colonies, 
under the guise of a story about John Bull, his forest, 
and the foresters who cleared and settled it ; the whole 
is carried through with much spirit and ingenuity, and 
the style is light.^ Our novel-hating ancestors did not 
object to thrilling narrative, if only it were true; and the 
harrowing experiences of Mary Rowlandson, John Wil- 
liams, and others were well known in the homes of colonial 
New England. The same readers would have seen little 
difference, as to truth, in The History of Maria Kittle^ 
by Ann E. Bleecker,^ which is in the form of a letter 
and purports to be true, although much of it is evidently 
fictitious. It narrates with no little vividness the calamities 
of the heroine at the hands of savages during the French 
and Indian War. Although the subject is thus entirely 
American, the style shows in many places the influence 
of the contemporary European school of sentiment : — 

" Dear Mrs. Willis, shall we not be interested likewise in your 
misfortunes?" "Ah! do, (added Mademoiselle V.) my heart is 
now sweetly tuned to melancholy. I love to indulge these divine 
sensibilities." . . . Mrs. Willis bowed. She dropt a few tears; 
but assuming a composed look, she began : — "I am the daughter 
of a poor clergyman." 

1 The Foresters was running in The Columbian Magazine in 1788. 
In 1792 it appeared in book form. The second edition, 1796, brings 
the narrative down to Jay's Treaty. Some of the names are ingenious 
and amusing: John Codline = Massachusetts; Walter Pipeweed = Vir- 
ginia (with a reference at first to Raleigh). 

2 It is contained in her Posthumous Works, 1793 ; she' died in 

1783. 



PROSE FICTION. 93 

The Puritan reader might still have felt safe over 'the 
pages of Mrs. Bleecker's The Story of Henry and Anne 
(which tells of the love and misfortunes of German peas- 
ants who finally find a paradise in America), for the 
reader is assured that it is "founded on fact." John 
B. Linn's History of Elvira and Augustus and Aurelia 
(in his Miscellaneous Works, 1795) are short tales of 
love and "sensibility" with some moral instruction thrown 
in. More virile and amusing is Hugh H. Brackenridge's 
Modern Chivalry : containing the Adventures of a Cap- 
tain, and Teague 0' Regan, his Servant (i 792-1806), a 
vigorous satire on American life, upon the model (says 
the author) of Cervantes, Rabelais, Le Sage, and "espe- 
cially Swift." The first volume has more narrative than 
the other three, and is still entertaining ; the satire and 
humor are broad (Teague is about to be elected to the 
state legislature and to membership in a philosophical 
society, and is at last made a judge), but vigorous and 
genuine. The portrait of Teague as an emotional, super- 
stitious, quick-witted, impudent Irishman is very lifelike, 
although the Irish brogue is poorly imitated. On the 
same border-line of pure fiction stand Royall Tyler's 
Smollett-like The Algerine Captive (1799) ^^^ "^^^ 
Yankee in London (1809), and Irving's A History of 
New Yo7'k ; the last will be spoken of more at length 
on a later page. 

But novels pure and simple were also written in 
America before the end of the century, although there 
was a tendency at first to announce them as "founded 
upon fact." Susanna H. Rowson wrote her first novel, 
Victoria (1786), and Charlotte Temple (1790), her 
most famous work, ii^ England ; but Trials of the 



94 THE LITERATURE FROM 1789 to 1815. 

Human Heart (1795), Reuben and Rachel (1798), 
Sarah (1802), and others were composed in America. 
Charlotte Temple^ a Tale of Truth} a story of innocence, 
love, betrayal, desertion, and death, although often marred 
by sentimentality and "fine writing," is vivid and truly 
pathetic. The Coquette; or, the History of Eliza Whar-. 
ton, a Novel Founded on Fact (1797), by Hannah W. 
Foster, the wife of a Massachusetts clergyman, was 
also very popular for a generation or more ; its moral is 
similar to that of Charlotte Temple, the style is old- 
fashioned and formal, and the whole is closely modelled 
upon Richardson, but it has, nevertheless, considerable 
animation and genuine pathos. Female Quixotism 
(1808), a satirical novel by Tabitha G. Tenney, wife of a 
New Hampshire physician, was popular for some years. 

Charles Brockden Brown, a spirit of another sort 
and a mightier, the first American who adopted letters as 
his sole profession, was born in Philadelphia, January 17, 
1 7 71, of Quaker parentage. He studied law, but could 
not bring himself to the practice of it, and for several 
years lived a desultory Hfe, much of the time in New 
York, where, among the members of "The Friendly 
Club," he found congenial society. Wieland, his first 
published romance, came out in 1798, and was followed 
by five others within the next six years.^ His life was 

1 It is said that the heroine was Charlotte Stanley, daughter of an 
English clergyman ; her betrayer, Colonel John Montressor of the British 
army ; and that she now lies buried in the graveyard of Trinity Church, 
New York. 

2 Ormond, 1799 ; Arthur Mervyn, Part I., 1799, Part II., 1800 ; Edgar 
Huntly, 1799 ; Clara Howard, 1801 ; Jane Talbot, 1804. An unfinished 
romance had preceded Wieland ; long extracts from it are published in 
Dunlap's life of Brown. A second novel, Sky Walk, was in press in 
1798, when the death of the publisher stopped further progress ; por. 



CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN. 95 

henceforth a busy one. He edited two magazines and 
an annual register/ published three poHtical pamphlets,^ 
and labored upon a great geographical and an historical 
work/ besides writing many other pieces in verse and 
prose.* In 1804 he married, and had a happy home-life. 
But his health had always been delicate, consumption 
seized him, and he died on February 22, 1810. 

Brown had a speculative, analytic mind ; his tempera- 
ment was gloomy, if not morbid ; he wrote at a time when 
the school of mystery and terror was dominant in EngHsh 
fiction j and he early fell under the influence of WiUiam 
Godwin, the author of Political Justice, a book of radical 
and powerful abstract reasoning, and of Caleb Williams, 
a novel of exciting incident and keen analysis of abnormal 
mental states. These qualities and influences, together 
with his American environment and his own genius, 
determined the nature of his novels. They are all 
studies in morbid psychology, with frequently a back- 
ground of bold speculation upon moral and religious 
problems ; the best of them contain thrilling events, 
sometimes seemingly supernatural but (in harmony with 
Brown's rationalistic temper) finally explained by natural 
causes ; they are given an American setting ; and they all 

tions of the novel, says Dunlap, were utilized in Edgar Huntly, Brown's 
first publication was Alcuin, a Dialogue on the Rights of Women, 1797. 

1 The Monthly Magazine and America?! Review, New York, 1799- 
1800. The Literary Magazine and American Register, Philadelphia, 
1803-1808. The American Register, Philadelphia, 1806-18 10. 

2 Pamphlets in favor of the Louisiana purchase (1803), in favor of a 
treaty with England which President Jefferson had just rejected (1807 ?), 
and against the Embargo (1809). 

3 General Geography and Rome during the Age of the Antonines. 

^ A History of Carsol, apparently a Utopian sketch. Memoirs of 
Carwin. Memoirs of Stephen Calvert. Thessalo?iica, a Roman Story. 
These writings, with others, are printed in Dunlap's life of Brown. 



96 THE LITERATURE FROM 1789 to 1815. 

leave the impression of mingled crudeness and power. 
They are, however, of very unequal merit. A brief out- 
line of the main plot will give some idea of the merits 
and defects of each. In Clara Hozvard, the title-char- 
acter and Philip Stanley, lovers, struggle with their sense 
of duty to Mary Wilmot, to whom Philip was formerly 
betrothed although he did not love her ; she has mysteri- 
ously disappeared, and, urged on by Clara, he sets out to 
find her ; the lovers suffer many vacillations of mind ; the 
Gordian knot is finally cut by the marriage of the super- 
fluous Mary to another. In Jane Talbot, Jane, a widow, 
loves Henry Golden; but her foster-mother, the rich 
Mrs. Fielding, objects to the marriage because of Gol- 
den's heresy and former immorahty ; Jane now gives her 
lover up and now calls him back ; he finally goes away 
to avoid beggaring her ; is shipwrecked ; returns, con- 
veniently cured of his scepticism, finds Mrs. Fielding 
conveniently dead, and marries Jane. Ormorid has more 
action, and the title-character is a more interesting study, 
although he is too obviously modelled upon Falkland in 
Caleb Williams, Constantia Dudley, reduced to dire 
poverty, is aided by Ormond, a man of vast wealth, power- 
ful mind, and immoral principles (although at first he 
seems a miracle of benevolence), who has mysterious 
means of learning the secrets of others and executing his 
purposes ; he seeks Constantia in love but not in marriage ; 
finding her invincible, assaults her in a lonely house, and 
is slain by her hand. In the First Part oi A^-thur Mervyn, 
the hero is secretary to Welbeck, a weaker Ormond ; Wel- 
beck kills Watson (whose sister he has wronged) in a 
duel in Welbeck's house, and Mervyn helps him bury the 
body in the cellar ; Welbeck then flees, and Mervyn finds 



CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN. 97 

work on a farm near Philadelphia ; the yellow fever breaks 
out in the city ; Mervyn, venturing in to rescue a friend, 
catches the disease, and goes to Welbeck's deserted 
house to escape the horrible hospital ; there he finds 
Welbeck, who quarrels with him over a large sum of 
stolen money, and, baffled and furious, leaves him to 
die. The Second Part is largely filled with the love- 
affairs of Merv)m, who, forsaking a young girl devotedly 
attached to him, marries a Jewish widow, six years his 
senior ; the whole is bizarre. Edgar Huntly is a study 
of sleep-walking and madness ; the scene is western 
Pennsylvania. Huntly^s friend Waldegrave has been 
murdered, and Huntly accuses CHthero, a newly come 
farm-hand ; Clithero denies the charge, and explains his 
strange actions by his remorse for having slain his bene- 
factress, Mrs. Lorimer, in temporary madness, a deed 
which had compelled him to flee to America ; he then re- 
treats to a neighboring mountainous tract, whither Huntly 
takes him food. One of the irrelevant episodes which 
often mar Brown's plots is here introduced : a young man 
suddenly appears, and by a long tale makes out a good 
claim to the small fortune which Waldegrave, to the 
surprise of all, had been found to have to his credit in 
the bank ; the young man goes away for the present, and 
nothing comes of the incident.^ The most exciting part 
of the story now begins. Huntly, who (unknown to 
himself) is a sleep-walker, wakes up one night to find 
himself lying at the bottom of a pit in a cave, covered 
with bruises and half-famished; cUmbing out of the pit, 
he sees the eyes of a cougar glaring through the pitchy 
darkness ; he hurls his tomahawk, sphts the cougar's 

1 The same situation is used again in Clara Howard. 
H 



98 THE LITERATURE FROM 1789 to 181 5. 

skull, and devours its flesh and blood ; crawling toward 
the mouth of the cave, he discovers there five Indians 
(four of whom are sleeping around a fire) and a captive 
white girl ; he brains the sentinel, and escapes with the 
captive to a log hut ; here, finding firearms, he fights 
and slays the three savages who pursued. On his way 
home he meets with Sarsefield, his former teacher, who 
informs him that Mrs. Lorimer is not dead ; Huntly 
tells Clithero, thinking to cure his remorse ; but the 
latter, who is a confirmed madman, again attempts her 
life, is captured, and on the way to confinement leaps 
overboard and is drowned. Wieland is a study of in- 
herited religious mania induced by ventriloquism. Wie- 
land's father, a religious eccentric, had died mysteriously of 
what seems to be electricity or spontaneous combustion ; 
with the advent of the mysterious and powerful Carwin, 
voices are heard in the air giving commands and warnings, 
which Wieland takes to be supernatural and broods over ; 
finally he hears a heavenly voice commanding him to 
sacrifice to God his wife and children ; this he does, and, 
raving mad but exalted by a sense of moral sublimity, is 
fettered in a maniac's cell ; from this he escapes, and is 
about to kill his sister also, when Carwin undeceives him 
by again exercising his ventriloquial power, and the poor 
deluded man dies of spiritual collapse. 

Even from these imperfect outlines it can be seen that 
Brown's plots are, at their best, unique and powerful. 
But the total effect is injured by irrelevant episodes and 
blind alleys, by stories within stories to confusion and 
lessening of interest, by the improbabihties and clumsy 
devices upon which the action often turns, and by dawdhng 
conclusions after a striking climax. Some of these defects 



CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN. 99 

were due to haste, it being Brown's custom to begin to 
print before he had finished writing or had even thought 
his story through. His device of telhng the story by 
letters, or by a long narrative written by one of the 
characters to a friend, although it is easily accounted for 
by the example of some of his predecessors in EngHsh 
fiction, is nevertheless a clumsy method in tales of ex- 
citing incident. His characters are boldly and clearly 
conceived in their main outhnes but are not always ade- 
quately motived ; Carwin, for instance, has no sufficient 
motive for his reckless deeds, and there is no apparent 
cause for the sudden madness of Clithero. Furthermore, 
Brown's study of mind and motive is not subtle or curious 
or natural enough to arouse much interest apart from ex- 
citing action : this is the cause of the inferiority oi Jane 
Talbot and Clara Howard — the mental situation is unin- 
teresting and the action is feeble ; but even in his study of 
more remarkable minds, as Ormond's or Carwin's, the 
interest is chiefly in the horrible resultant events. Brown's 
habit, borrowed from Caleb Williams, of making the nar- 
rator explain his mental movements minutely becomes 
tiresome, particularly as the thoughts and counter- 
thoughts detailed are often of the most obvious sort. 
The style, also, is a combination of crudeness and power. 
It is often stiff and sometimes ludicrously stilted ; ^ but 
everywhere it has strength ; and in passages of exciting 
description and narration it rises to a very high degree of 
power. In these scenes of horror — the maniac Wie- 

1 In Edgar Huntly occur these expressions within a few pages: 
•' The channel [of the river] . . . was encumbered with asperities ; " 
" the vociferation of a savage ; " " this action [the levelling of a gun 
at his head] was sufficiently conformable to my prognostics." Brown's 
plentiful logic and scant sense of humor sometimes led him, in his 



IOC THE LITERATURE FROM 1789 to 1815. 

land about to kill his sister; Huntly groping about in 
the black pit ; the midnight burial of Watson in the cellar ; 
Ormond's deliberate and gloating assault upon his trem- 
bling victim in the lonely house ; the loathsome scenes in 
the pestilence-stricken city — Brown is in his element, 
and by them he has made a permanent contribution to 
the literature of terror. Inferior to Hawthorne in subtle 
spiritual suggestiveness, to Poe in brilUancy, intensity, and 
enveloping atmosphere of poetic gloom, he is perhaps 
superior to them and to the whole contemporary English 
school of terror in Defoe-like sense of reality and in 
sheer mass of overwhelming horror.^ How far his 
work is distinctively American is a question of minor 
consequence. In his characters is nothing essentially 
American; and although the main action is always in 
this country, the setting is usually very faint. The 
pictures of yellow- fever scenes in Arthur Mervyn and 
Ormond form indeed a powerful background and are 
drawn from personal knowledge ; ^ but yellow fever, 

analysis of mental movements, to announce the most obvious facts with 
pompous solemnity ; thus the beautiful Constantia Dudley, thinking if 
she can't make a little money by sewing, is made to affirm as a logical 
preliminary, " Clothing is one of the necessaries of human existence." 
But in the later novels the style is somewhat simpler and more fluent; 
and Thessalonica, a Ro7nan Tale, apparently a late work, shows marked 
improvement in structure also, having excellent unity, proportions, and 
climax, and suggests that if Brown had lived he might have become a 
brilliant writer of historical fiction of the spectacular sort. 

1 Brown's fiction found some readers in England. Several of his 
novels were republished there, and yane Talbot was published there 
first. " Brown's [best] four novels," says Peacock, " Schiller's Robbers, 
and Goethe's Faust, were, of all the works with which he was familiar, 
those which took the deepest root in Shelley's mind." — Dowden's life of 
Shelley, Vol. 1., p. 472. 

2 Brown was in New York while the fever raged there in 1798 ; one of 
his dearest friends, a physician, died of it; and the novelist himself ex- 
perienced the earlier stages of the disease. 



CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN. 



lOI 



fortunately, .is not a permanent and essential feature of 
American life. The one instance in which Brown has 
emphasized material essentially American is in Edgar 
Huntly, where the descriptions of Indian warfare are at 
least equal to Cooper's in vividness, and superior to them 
in ugly realism. But the novel of mystery and terror, 
unlike the novel of character or manners, does not much 
depend for its peculiar effects upon the characteristics of 
the time and place where it is brought forth ; it moves in 
a semi-supernatural world of its own, gathering its mate- 
rials wherever it can find them ; and the novels of Brown 
are quite as much American as The Castle of Otranfo, 
The Mysteries of Udolpho^ and The Monk are English. 



2. THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

(1815-1870). 

HISTORICAL EVENTS. 



Monroe's administration, 1817- 

1825. 
Wars with Seminole Indians, 18 17, 

1835. 
First steamboat crosses the Atlantic, 

1819. 
Acquisition of Florida, 1819. 
Missouri Compromise, 1820. 
Monroe Doctrine announced, 1823. 
Higher protective tariff, 1824. 
Erie Canal finished, 1825. 
J. Q. Adams's administration, 1825- 

1829. 
Temperance reform begun, 1826. 
Jackson's administrations, 1829- 

1837. 
First steam railroad in America, 
1830. 



Garrison starts The Liberator (Ab- 
olitionist), 1831. 

South CaroHna nullifies the new 
tariff, 1832. 

McCormick's reaper invented, 
1834. 

Formation of Whig party, 1834. 

Use of hard coal becomes com- 
mon, 1835. 

Van Buren's administration, 1837- 
1841. 

Business panic, 1837. 

Harrison and Tyler's administra- 
tion, 1841-1845. 

Ashburton Treaty settles north- 
eastern boundary, 1842. 

First electric telegraph in America, 
1844. 



102 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 



Annexation of Texas, 1845. 

Polk's administration, 1845-1849. 

Northwestern boundary settled by 
treaty, 1846. 

War with Mexico, 1846-1847. 

Discovery of gold in California, 
1848. 

Mormons settle in Utah, 1848. 

Taylor and Fillmore's administra- 
tion, 1849-1853. 

Fugitive Slave Law, 1850. 

Pierce's administration, 1853-1857. 

Acquisition of Arizona and New 
Mexico, 1848-1853. 

Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 1854. 



Formation of Republican party, 

1854. 
Buchanan's administration, 1857- 

1861. 
Business panic, 1857. 
First Atlantic cable, 1858. 
Lincoln's administration, 1861- 

1865. 
Civil War, 1861-1865. 
Lincoln assassinated, 1865. 
Johnson's administration, 1865- 

1869. 
Pacific Railroad completed, 1869. 
Reconstruction of Southern States^ 

1865-1870. 



LITERATURE IN ENGLAND. 



Shelley's poems, 1813-1824. 
Scott's novels, 1814-1831. 
Byron's later poems, 1816-1824. 
Coleridge's later prose and poetryi 

18 16-1840. 
Moore's later poems, 1817-1828. 
Keats's poems, 1S17-1820. 
Hazlitt's essays, 1817-1825. 
Hallam's Middle Ages, 18 18. 
Crabbe's Tales of the Hall, 18 19. 
Wordsworth's later poems, 18 19- 

1850. 
Lamb's essays, 1820-1833. 
De Quincey's works, 1821-1861. 
Landor's prose and later poetry, 

1824-1853. 
Carlyle's works, 1824-1881. 
Macaulay's works, 1825-1860. 
Mrs. Browning's poems, 1826-1862. 
Poems by Tennyson, 1827-1869. 
J. S. Mill's works, 1829-1874. 
Poems by Robert Browning, 1833- 

1868. 



Newman's works, 1833-187O0 
Dickens's works, 1834-1870. 
Thackeray's works, 1837-1867. 
Works by Ruskin, 1839-1870. 
" George Eliot's " works, 1846-1883. 
Grote's History of Greece, 1846- 

1856. 
Arnold's poems, 1848-1858 ; essays, 

1861-1888. 
Merivale's History of the Romans^ 

1850-1862. 
Froude's History of England, 1856- 

1869. 
William Morris's poems, 1858-1887. 
Darwin's Origin of Species, 1859. 
Poems by Swinburne, 1861-1870. 
Spencer's First Principles, 1862. 
Essays by Huxley, 1863-1870. 
Gardiner's History of England, 

1863-1882. 
Freeman's History of the Norman 

Co7iquest, 1867-1876. 



GENERAL CONDITIONS. 103 

The half^century from the close of the second war with 
England to the end of the Civil War and the reconstruc- 
tion of the seceding states, was the most momentous 
period in the history of the Union. During these years 
the Young Republic became the Great Republic, the 
Giant of the West. It was a time of marvellous national 
growth, of intellectual and moral quickening, of mighty 
conflicts in the forum and on the field of battle ; and it 
was also the Golden Age of American literature. 

The increase in territory and population was very 
great, and,' iH Tts effects upon American Hfe, very signifi- 
cant. The seven millions of 18 10 had become twenty- 
three millions in 1850 and thirty- eight millions in 1870. 
By the admission of Texas, and the war with Mexico, the 
vast Southwest was added to the national domain, which 
now embraced three million square miles, an area equal to 
more than three-fourths of all Europe ; while the steady 
westward progress of the long wagon-trains of the pioneer 
increased the settled area from 407,945 square miles in 
1810 to 1,194,754 in i860. The poor of the Old World 
flocked to this New World refuge in rapidly augmenting 
numbers, more than five millions coming between the 
years 1820 and i860. This great increase in the total 
population was accompanied by a Hke increase in town 
and city Hfe. In 1800 the dwellers in cities of 8000 or 
more inhabitants were only four per cent of the whole 
population, and in i820only five per cent ; but in 1850 the 
percentage had risen to twelve, and in i860 to sixteen. 

But alongside this unparalleled national growth there 
loomed up, bigger and blacker with every decade, a terri- 
ble danger. Slavery in the North, having proved unprofit- 
able, had gradually died out, and the Northern conscience 



104 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

thereupon began to wax tender about the moral wrongs 
of that system of labor. In the South, on the contrary, 
where the evils of slavery had once been freely acknowl- 
edged, a change of sentiment set in. The growing of 
cotton, rice, and sugar-cane had become the great indus- 
tries ; ^ slave-labor was deemed essential in them ; and so 
there developed a jealous regard for "the peculiar insti- 
tution.'* In particular, the South naturally resented all 
outside interference with what it regarded as wholly its 
own affair, this feeling being shared even by Southerners 
who earnestly desired reform. The question of the exten- 
sion of slavery into the new states gave rise to a prolonged 
and bitter struggle ; the abolitionists poured oil on the 
flames by demanding the abolition of slavery in the states 
where it already existed ; compromise after compromise 
only delayed " the irrepressible conflict " ; until at last 
four years of bloody fratricidal war bought emancipation 
and national unity at a fearful cost, especially to the 
torn and bleeding South, with whose suff*erings, not yet 
wholly past, the younger generation at the North can 
sympathize as their fathers in the stress of battle and the 
flush of victory could not. The war was a baptism of fire 
unto a higher life for the whole nation ; but the immedi- 
ate effect was hostile to literature and the fine arts, which 
have always flourished best in the soil of peace. The 
fierce political agitation that preceded the war was also 
unfavorable to the development of literature except in 
the one domain of oratory, which on the platform and in 



1 In 1850 the cotton crop was valued at ^105,600,000 ; sugar at 
^12,396,150; rice at ^3,000,000. The slave population, which in 1790 
was only 697,681 for the whole country, in 1820 had risen to 1,538,022 
and in 1850 to 3,204,313. 



RAPID NATIONAL GROWTH. 105 

Congress equalled and in some respects surpassed the 
oratory of the Revolutionary period. 

The other great fact of the times — the rapid national 
growth — likewise retarded the progress of art in Amer- 
ica. The enormous task of settling the great West 
absorbed energy and talent which might otherwise have 
gone to the enriching of culture in regions already settled. 
As it was, the necessarily crude civilization in the new 
states and territories lowered the level of refinement in 
the country as a whole and by its effect upon the national 
ideal reacted unfavorably even upon life in the older 
1 states. The case was made worse by wholesale immigra- 
|tion. Europe poured into us her ignorance and poverty, 
and then sneered at our lack of culture. The hard- 
handed miUions that came to America from many lands 
earned a welcome by their laborious toil in helping to 
develop the physical resources of a new continent, but 
on the whole they were a drag upon the intellectual, 
moral, and aesthetic life of the nation. Furthermore, the 
rapid growth of the country, a growth too rapid for per- 
fect health, favored the development of a cheap and 
\iilgar national pride. All foreign critics of American 
life at this period note the prevalence of an ill-bred 
boastfulness which swallowed greedily the grossest flattery 
and showed undue sensitiveness to European and espe- 
cially to English censure. The almost universal absorption 
in the pursuit of wealth was still another hinderance to 
the finer" spirituality. Such materialism was natural 
enough, it was even necessary, in the stage which the 
country had then reached. Freedom, equality of rights, 
opportunities open to him who had the vigor to enter, all 
stimulated individual enterprise ; in a land without privi- 



io6 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

leged classes or fixed social castes, wealth was a key not 
only to comfort but to social and often to political distinc- 
tion ; and a new and rapidly growing country, in which 
business was brisk and the powerful agencies of modern 
civilization could be applied on a large scale, afforded 
tempting chances for the making of fortunes both small 
and great. In the East, under the stimulus of higher 
tariffs, manufactures developed rapidly and were very 
profitable; on river and lake and prairie, cities sprang 
up like mushrooms ; the discovery of gold and other 
metals in the West begot a frenzy in many brains ; the 
locomotive tunnelled the mountain or scaled its side, 
blazed a path through vast woods still the haunt of deer, 
flashed across endless plains where roamed the Indian 
and the buffalo, and returned bringing great wealth to 
the hands that sent it forth.^ It was no wonder that 
America was fascinated with the game of Mammon, and 
on the whole it was well that it should be for a timer 
" Great, intelligent, sensual, and avaricious America," 
wrote Emerson in 1841.^ But it was sensual and ava- 
ricious largely because it was physically great ; and it 
was to be spiritually great in coming years partly because 
it was sensual and avaricious for the present, laying with 
passionate energy the material foundations of a colossal 
nation. Yet the immediate effect was to keep the na- 
tional fibre comparatively coarse and to delay the time 
when the genius of America should find adequate ex- 
pression in terms of beauty. 

1 In 1840 Chicago was a village of 4479 inhabitants ; in i860 it had a 
population of 112,172. In 1830 there were 23 miles of railroad in the 
United States ; in i860 there were 30,600 miles, only 1547 less than in 
all Europe. 

2 Letter to Carlyle, July 31. 



LEAVENING FORCES. 107 

But the picture has a brighter side. Many tendencies 
of the time were conducive to a much higher develop- 
ment of Hterature and art than had before been possible 
in the New World. The consciousness of national unity 
and greatness was immensely furthered by the struggle 
against secession, by the building of railroads binding 
East to West, and North to South, and by the enormous 
increase in population and wealth, although the full liter- 
ary fruit from the ever-fruitful tree of a just and noble 
national pride is yet to be gathered. The mass of the 
people impressed European travellers as being in a high 
degree religious, moral , and intelligent — qualities favor- 
able to nterary greatness as to greatness of any kind. 
In the South, education for white children was on the 
mend ; and the settlers of the West carried with them 
Bible and Spelling-book. Innumerable newspapers cul- 
tivated the habit of reading, and disseminated a wide- 
spread if superficial intelligence.^ Magazines, some of 
high intellectual and literary merit, were now numerous. ^ 
The lyceum and the popular lecture promoted a genuine 
if rather provincial intellectual quickening. Colleges 
were multiplying, and the older ones were becoming cen- 

1 In 1840 there were 1631 newspapers, with an annual issue of 
195,838,671 copies ; in i860 there were 4501, with an annual issue of 
927.951.548 copies. 

2 Some of the most noteworthy were these : The North American 
Review, 1815-; The New York Mirror, 1 823-1842; The Southern 
Literary Gazette, 1825 ; The American Quarterly Review, Philadelphia, 
1827-1837 ; The Southern Review, 1828-1832 ; The Wester?i Review, 
1828-1830; The New England Magazine, 1831-1835 ; The Knicker- 
bocker, 1833-1860; The Western Mojithly Magazine, 1833-1836; The 
Southern Literary Messenger, Richmond, 1834-1864 ; Graham's Maga- 
zine, Philadelphia, 1840-1850 ; The Souther?!. Quarterly Review, 1842- 
1852; Harpers Monthly, 1850- ; Putnam's Mojithly, New York, 1853- 
1857, 1867-1869- The Atlantic Mo7ithly, 1857-. 



io8 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

tres of a riper scholarship and a richer culture. Public 
libraries and museums of art were founded. Wealth, 
with its attendant leisure and foreign travel, favored the 
growth of a love for beauty and the things of the intellect. 
A distinctively American school of landscape-painting 
began with Cole, Doughty, and others, who handled 
successfully the scenery of the Hudson and our brilliant 
autumnal effects ; ^ and Trumbuirs pictures in the Capi- 
tol, on subjects from American history, were at least 
a respectable beginning in a difficult branch of the 
painter's art. American sculpture of high merit came 
from the chisels of Greenough, Powers, Story, and others. 
The appreciation of music, if not the creation of it, grew 
in the United States with the century. Societies for the 
rendering of oratorios were early organized in most of 
the principal cities, and the Boston Academy of Music 
was established in 1833 ; Enghsh opera companies found 
a welcome in New Orleans in 1820, in New York in 
182 1 ; an Italian opera was first given in 1825, in the 
latter city ; and Jenny Lind, in her tour a generation later, 
was everywhere received with rapturous enthusiasm. 

In short, the conditions of American Hfe in New Eng- 
land, the Middle States, and parts of the South, were now 
more favorable than ever before for the production of a 
large body of good literature ; and such a hterature was 
forthcoming. In addition to the general factors already 
touched upon, there were special reasons why American 
writers were now better able to clothe their thoughts in 
that perfection of form upon which so much of the pleas- 
ure and even of the value of Hterature depends. For 

1 The school arose about the year 1825, and hence was nearly con- 
temporary with the new nature poetry of Bryant. 



LEAVENING FORCES. 109 

one thing, the increase in the size of the reading pubHc, 
with the attendant increase in the number and circulation 
of periodicals and the opportunity for large sales of books, 
^now made it possible for an author to live by his pen, 
with the natural result that men of talent and genius were 
able to devote themselves to the art of literature and to 
attain greater skill in the practice of it.^ Again, not only 
was there more culture at home, but the packet and the 
steamship, by making ocean travel quicker and more com- 
fortable, brought the culture of the Old World nearer to 
the New ; so that, in place of slavish imitation of the letter 
of foreign models, an intelligent absorption and free repro- 
duction of their spirit was easily possible to the American 
writer of verse or prose, a more genuine culture and a 
more genuine independence going hand in hand. With 
the widening of American scholarship there came, fur- 
thermore, a broadening of the literary forces which played 
upon our literature. The thought and literature of Eng- 
land had been for long the great external influence upon 
the thought and literature of America ; but in the years 
now under review there was a healthful broadening of 
knowledge, and the life and literatures of Germany, Italy, 
Spain, and the north of Europe brought new treasure 
into the coffers of the American historian, essayist, 
novelist, and poet. 

American writers now also had some advantage over 
their predecessors in the matter of subjects adapted for 
imaginative treatment. The new feeling for nature — for 



1 The profits of authorship were, of course, still meagre for many- 
years; and the lack of an international copyright law, by allowing 
American publishers to steal the labor of English authors, instead of 
paying for home talent, tended to keep them meagre. 



no THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

its beauty and sublimity, its mystery and spiritual signifi* 
cance — was aroused in the New World even more easily 
than in the Old, and proved in fact the source of our 
earliest poetry of high merit. Indian life was to American 
writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a 
frequent subject for history and description, but it lay too 
near their everyday walk and conversation to lend itself 
readily to poetic treatment or to imaginative handling in 
prose ; while to Cooper and Longfellow the red man of 
the forest was sufficiently removed in time to be idealized 
without difficulty into a pathetic, noble, and romantic 
figure. American history of the seventeenth century 
and even of the eighteenth — the personal incidents and 
the fireside legends, at least, which hang upon the fringe 
of the greater and too well-known events — had taken on 
in the nineteenth century something of the poetry of the 
Past, the more because men of the present age have 
drawn away so rapidly from the modes of life of their 
grandsires. The witchcraft in which Cotton Mather 
believed had a peculiar interest and a high literary value 
for the unbeHeving generation of Hawthorne ; and the 
manners and customs of Revolutionary days acquired in 
half a century some of the charm of the obsolete. 

American authors of the nineteenth century in com- 
parison with their forerunners were thus rich in literary 
material, but in comparison with their brother craftsmen 
of Europe they were poor. They lived in a land settled 
but recently and by a race which had outlived the age of 
chivalry and poetic superstition. The Puritans brought 
with them a few valuable devils, but no fairies, brownies, 
water-kelpies, or dragons to haunt the woods and streams 
of the New World. American history has been great in 



THE NATIONAL LIMITATIONS. m 

its ideas and in its influence upon the progress of man- 
kind ; but it has been deficient in the spectacular, the pic- 
turesque, the romantic, the dramatic — in nearly all the 
elements which the poet and romancer most successfully 
build up into forms of art. Nature in America is indeed 
beautiful and magnificent, but it is largely destitute of the 
heightened charm exerted over most minds by the union 
of natural beauty with historic association and poetic 
legend. No ruined castles, 

Cased in the unfeeling armor of old time, 

rise along our rivers, to remind the traveller of bygone 
centuries when there were 

Banners on high, and battles passed below. 

No venerable and massive cathedrals stand in our noisy 
cities, silent memorials of the mellow beauty and rehgion 
in the lives of generations long dead. Even the present 
in America, with its democratic level and monotony, 
its lack of those poetic and dramatic contrasts of in- 
herited conditions which make society in the Old 
World more interesting to the artist if also less condu- 
cive to the happiness and development of the common 
people, is comparatively poor in material for literature 
of the type which has hitherto best held the attention 
of mankind. These handicaps of the American author in 
choice of subjects, together with the crudeness of life in 
much of the country and the practical and moral rather 
than artistic temper of the mass of the people, may serve 
to warn us once more that in the field we are about to 
traverse, rich as it is compared with the tracts already 
passed, we must not look for literature supremely great. 
Nor, even within this field, will it be wise to confine our 



112 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

attention wholly to the best. In the half-centary with 
which we now have to do, some dozen American authors 
attained to such relative preeminence that it is easy to 
forget that their writings constitute only a part of the 
literature of their times ; and it is one of the functions of 
a history of literature to remind the reader that moun- 
tains imply foot-hills and a plain, and to help him to see 
the literary landscape in its entirety. For this reason the 
work of representative minor writers will be sketched-in 
as a setting for the greater, that the latter may thereby 
be taken out of the literary vacuum in which they might 
otherwise seem to stand. 

,-The Poets, Essayists, and Writers of Prose Fiction 
may for convenience be loosely grouped into schools 
according to the section of the country in which they 
lived. The New York, or " Knickerbocker," School had 
precedence in time. Its great names are Irving, Cooper, 
and Bryant ; but it includes several other writers of 
no mean ability, who, like other minor authors of the 
period, have a claim upon our gratitude for their part in 
creating that better literary atmosphere without which 
their more famous brethren could not have "waxed so 
great." It is not strange that New York City early 
developed into somewhat of a literary centre. The mix- 
ture of many nationalities in its population encouraged 
breadth of ideas and a cosmopolitan spirit, at the same 
time that it afforded some striking contrasts in character 
and mode of life, the old Dutch element in particular 
furnishing materials both amusing and picturesque. The 
beautiful and impressive scenery of the Hudson was 
another feature of evident literary value. The great 
drawback, then as now, was the excess of the commercial 



THE NEW YORK SCHOOL. 113 

spirit over the intellectual and artistic. But the New 
York even of the years 1820 to 1840 was far from devoid 
of the finer culture. At the earUer date its population 
was 123,706, at the later 312,710; and the causes and 
consequents of the higher civilization in large cities — 
wealth, leisure, and refinement ; churches, schools, col- 
leges, and libraries ; the theatre, the opera, the newspaper, 
and the magazine — were present in more and more 
abundance. 

Among the minor authors who grew up amid these 
conditions, James K. Paulding (1778-1860), Irving's 
lifelong friend, and Secretary of the Navy under Van 
Buren, has an honorable place. He wrote some verse, 
including The Lay of the Scotch Fiddle (1813) — a clever 
parody on Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, full of honest 
contempt for the British navy, — and The Backwoodsman 
(1818), a tale of frontier hfe, in rather prosaic style. 
But his best work was in prose. He assisted Irving in 
the Salmagundi papers, unaided brought out a second 
series in 18 19-1820, and wrote several tales and novels 
besides much miscellaneous matter. His best novel, 
The Dutchman's Fireside (1831), combines some of the 
most attractive features of Cooper's and Irving's work, 
containing exciting incidents of Indian warfare, deHcate 
pen-pictures of Hudson scenery, and amusing sketches 
of Dutch life and character. A more briUiant man was 
Joseph Rodman Drake (i795-i82>0), a physician, by 
whose early death American literature suffered a severe 
loss. The Culprit Fay, written in 18 19, handles the 
time-worn material of fairy-lore with a fresh and delicate 
touch and a fancy that is in places exquisite. Drake's 
part in the Croaker poems, pubHshed anonymously in 



114 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

The Evening Post in 18 19, shows his gift for hght satiric 
and society verse ; and his poem, The American Flag. 
in the same series, beginning, 

When Freedom, from her mountain height, 

unites patriotic fervor with poetic beauty. The name of 
Fitz-Greene Halleck (i 790-1867), a bank clerk, is 
always associated with Drake's because of the close and 
beautiful friendship between the two men. Halleck was 
Drake's associate in the popular Croaker %2iS}i\t^ ; and a few 
of his later poems — Marco Bozzaris (1825), a spirited 
martial lyric on the Greeks' struggle for freedom from the 
Turks; Alnwick Castle (1827), beginning with romantic 
revery and ending in a vein of humorous satire ; Burns 
(1827), of which Burns's sister said, in 1855, "nothing 
finer has been written about Robert " ; and Red Jacket 
(1828), a humorous but sympathetic portrait of the 
famous Indian chief, who, 

With look like patient Job's eschewing evil; 
With motions graceful as a bird's in air; 

was yet 

... in sober truth, the veriest devil 
That e'er clinched fingers in a captive's hair ! 

— won deserved fame in their day, and are not yet wholly 
forgotten. Most of Halleck's other work is on a lower 
plane, although Fanny (181 9), a rather lame attempt to 
follow in the footsteps of Byron in Beppo and Don Juan, 
was popular for several years. John ^oward _Payne 
(1791-1852), actor, playwright, journalist, and United 
States consul at Tunis, a friend of Irving, Coleridge, and 
Lamb, is now remembered chiefly by his song of Ho^ne^^ 
Sweet Home (in his drama, Clari, 1823) ; but in his life- 



MINOR AUTHORS. 115 

time he had considerable fame as a clever dramatist, 
Brutus (1818) being one of his most successful plays. 
The more pretentious poems of Samuel Woodworth 
(i 785-1842) have gone down into oblivion, but he still 
sips immortality from The Old Oakeft Bucket (1826). 
George P. Morris (1802-1864), who with Woodworth 
founded The New York Mirror in 1823, pleased the 
taste of the times by his short and easy poems of com- 
monplace sentiment — Woodman^ Spare Thai, Tree ^ My 
Mother's Bible; The Main Truck; etc. Charles F. 
HoFF]\L^N (1806-1884), whose literary life was cut short 
by insanity in 1849, founded The Knickerbocker maga- 
zine in 1833, edited several other periodicals, and was a 
versatile and voluminous author, writing sketches of 
Western life, two novels ( Vanderlyn and Greyslaer) , 
and many poems ; of the poems those on love, nature, 
and Indian life have some originality, although the influ- 
ence of Byron and Moore upon them is often apparent. 
A more considerable figure in the Hterary world of his 
day, though he has since sadly dwindled, was Nathaniel 
P. Willis (1806-186 7). It is the fashion nowadays to 
sneer at Willis's '^ milk-and-water" paraphrases of Scrip- 
ture stories, and in truth they are better fitted for babes 
than for men. But it should be remembered that in 
these poems of diluted pathos and effeminate sensibility 
Willis was merely doing with a good deal of hterary 
grace what many other poets of the time were doing 
with none ; and, in particular, that this sickly stuff 
constituted only a small part of his hterary output. 
Some of his poems have a pretty fancy. His two plays, 
Bianca Visconti (1837) and Tortesa the Usurer (acted 
in New York, 1838; in London, 1839), ^^^ written in 



•ii6 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

manly style, and the lighter scenes show literary deft- 
ness and lively wit. His prose writings were varied and 
entertaining, his sketches of notables whom he met 
abroad having some permanent interest. And he did 
much to further general literary culture at home by 
his labors as founder or editor of several magazines.^ 
Alfred B. Street (1811-1881), state librarian of New 
YoxV^iTi Frontenac (1849) made an ambitious but not 
very successful attempt to handle Indian and frontier life 
in Scott's narrative manner ; his nature poems are full of 
fine observation, and have some beauty of mood and ex- 
pression, although they are far inferior to Bryant's in 
depth and strength ; The Gray Forest-Eagle (in Poems, 
1845), his best-known poem, has sweep of pinion, but is 
more rhetorical than poetical. Let it suffice, in passing 
to the great trio of the New York group, to mention 
Robert C. Sands (i 799-1832), William Leggett (1802- 
1839), Ralph Hoyt (1806-1878), Park Benjamin (1809- 
1864), and Henry T. Tuckerman (181 3-1 871), who, 
with " many more whose names on earth are dark,'' 
contributed their share to the literature of the Empire 
State. 

Washington Irving,^ the first American man of letters 

1 Some of his works are these: Sketches (poems), 1827; Melanie 
and Other Poems, 1835; Pencillings by the Way, 1835, 1844; Letters 
from under a Bridge, 1840; Poems of Passion, 1843; J^cidy Jane and 
Humorous Poems, 1844; Dashes at Life with a Free Pencil, 1845; 
Hurrygraphs, 1851 ; Paul Fane (novel), 1857; The Convalescent, 1859. 
Willis's father founded The Youth's Compaiiion in 1827. The poet 
established The American Monthly Magazine in 1829, which in 1831 was 
merged in The New York Mirror, with which he was connected for 
many years ; in 1839 he started The Corsair, to which Thackeray con- 
tributed; in 1846, with Morris, he founded The Home Journal 3.r\d was 
one of its editors for the rest of his life. 

2 Life. Born in New York City, April 3, 1783. Father, Scotch 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 117 

to win the ear of Europe and take the sting of truth out 
of Sydney Sxdth's contemptuous question, **Who reads 
an American book?"^ was only in part the product of 



tradesman; mother, English. Began study of law, 1799. First trip to 
Europe, 1804-1806. Admitted to New York bar, 1806. Death of 
Matilda Hoffman, his betrothed, 1809. Became a silent partner in his 
brothers' cutlery business, 1810. Appointed military aide to Governor 
Tompkins, 1814. Second residence abroad, 1815-1832: in Great 
Britain, 1815-1820; in Germany, Austria, France, with two visits to 
England, 1820-1826; in Spain, 1826-1829; in England, as secretary of 
United States Legation, 1829-1831. Received medal from Royal 
Society of Literature, and degree of LL.D. from Oxford, 1830. Return 
to America, and tour through the Southwest, 1832. Residence at 
Sunnyside, 1836-1842, Third residence abroad, as minister to Spain, 
1842-1846. Last years at Sunnyside, 1846-1859. Died at Sunnyside, 
Nov. 28, 1859. An Episcopalian. 

Works. Jonathan Oldstyle letters in The Morning Chronicle 
(owned by Irving's brother Peter), 1802. Salmagundi, Jan. 24, 1807- 
Jan. 25, 1808, twenty numbers at irregular intervals. The Literary 
Picture Gallery (" seven numbers of a . . . bagatelle in prose and 
verse," in which Irving probably "had a hand." — Warner's hfe of 
Irving, p. 51), 1808. A History of New York, by Diedrich Knicker- 
bocker, 1809. Articles in Select Reviews (afterwards called The Analec- 
tic Magazine), of which Irving was editor, 1812-1815 ; Traits of Indian 
Character and Philip of Pokanoket were reprinted in the English 
edition of The Sketch Book, and in subsequent American editions. 
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, (published in seven parts), 
1819-1820. Bracebridge Hall, 1822. Tales of a Traveller, 1824. The 
Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, 1828 ; abridged edition, 
1829. A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada, 1829. Voyages and 
Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus, 1831. The Alhambra, 
1832. The Crayon Miscellany : L, A Tour on the Prairies, 1835 ; 
II., Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey, 1835 ; III., Legends of the Con- 
quest of Spain, 1836. Astoria, 1836. Adventures of Captain Bonneville, 
1837. Contributions to The Knickerbocker magazine, 1839-1841 ; 
republished, with some other matter, as Wolfert's Roost, 1855. A 
Biography of Margaret Davidson, 1841. Oliver Goldsmith : a Biogra- 
phy, 1849. Mahomet and his Successors, 1849-1850. The Life of 
George Washington, 1855-1859. Collected and revised edition of 
works, 1848-1850. Most of Irving's writings were published simul- 
taneously in America and England. 

^ " In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book ? 
::r goes to an American play ? or looks at an American picture or 



ii8 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

American influences. His parents were natives of Great 
Britain; he owed most of his culture to prolonged resi- 
dence abroad; and the larger number of his subjects 
were taken from the life and history of England and 
Spain. His youth was not remarkably precocious, 
although at the age of twelve he contributed poems and 
essays to a local newspaper, and at thirteen wrote a play, 
which was acted at a friend's house. He was already 
devoted to the theatre, hurrying home at nine to attend 
family prayers, and then climbing out the window to 
return to the play. A boy of his fun-loving temperament 
could not be expected to devote himself very seriously, 
at sixteen, to the study of the law, and in truth Irving 
was never a hard student of that abstruse subject. Of 
more value to the future author of Rip Van Winkle v^^x^ 
the days spent with his gun in Sleepy Hollow in 1798, 
and a voyage up the Hudson two years later, where (he 
says) the ^^Kaatskill Mountains had the most witching 
effect on my boyish imagination." Upon his coming of 
age the delicate state of his health induced his brothers 
to send him abroad; he spent a delightful year and a 
half in France, Italy, and England, frequenting theatres 
and art galleries, meeting distinguished men, and by 
his gentlemanly charm finding easy entrance everywhere 
into the best society. On his return his life continued 
for many years to be rather an idle one. He belonged 
to a circle of convivial spirits, and the delights of society 
in New York, Albany, Baltimore, and Washington con- 
sumed much of his time. Two pieces of literary work — 

statue?" — The Edinbiirgh Review, January, 1820. "The courteous 
and ingenious stranger [Irving] whom we are ambitious of introducing 
to the notice of our readers." — The Edinburgh Review, August, 1820. 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 119 

Salmagundi and A History of New York — gave promise, 
however, of his future career. It was at this period, 
also, that the death of his betrothed, a lovely girl of 
eighteen, brought to Irving the great and lasting sorrow 
of his life.' Partly to divert his mind he resumed the 
interrupted History of New-^ York^ and with an aching 
heart wrote what was to set the world on laughter. 
This task completed, however, he sank back again into 
graceful indolence. 

During the first years of his second residence abroad, 
Irving made the acquaintance of Campbell, Scott, and 
other famous men, and gained that familiarity with 
English life which appears in the pages of The Sketch 
Book, But it was not till his brothers' bankruptcy, in 
1 8 18, that he resolutely gave himself to literature 
as a profession. His first venture. The Sketch Book^ 
at once became popular on both sides of the water, 
and brought in considerable sums.^ From this time 
Irving' s life was one of continuous literary labor, 
interrupted only by travelling and by the duties of 
public office. His researches into the fascinating 
history of Spain prolonged his foreign residence far 
beyond his first intention. But his heart and imagina- 
tion still clung to the scenes of his youth; and when 
he returned to America, after an absence of seventeen 
years, his most cherished ambition was to make for 
himself " a nest " on the banks of the Hudson, and there 

1 " I cannot tell you," he wrote years afterward, " what a horrid state 
of mind I was in for a long time. I seemed to care for nothing; the 
world was a blank to me. ... I was naturally susceptible, and tried to 
form other attachments, but my heart would not hold on." - P. M. 
Irving's life of Irving, Vol. I., pp. 226, 227, 

2 Before his death Irving had earned by his pen ^205,383. 



120 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

spend the remainder of his days. His wish was grati- 
fied. In the old Dutch cottage near Tarrytown, over- 
grown with ivy from Melrose Abbey, he lived for many 
years, happy in his work and in the companionship of 
the relatives and friends with whom he loved to fill his 
bachelor home. Only once did he suffer himself to be 
drawn away for long, — when he represented his country 
at the court of Spain ; he discharged the duties of his 
high office with dignity and tact, but was glad to return 
to his beloved Sunnyside and to his interrupted literary 
tasks. There his days gently declined, full of cheerful 
labor almost to the last, and there he died at a ripe old 
age, lamented by millions at home and abroad. 

Of Irving' s personal appearance a relative writes: 
" He had dark gray eyes, a handsome straight nose, . . . 
a broad, high, full forehead, and a small mouth. . . . 
His smile was exceedingly genial, lighting up his whole 
face and rendering it very attractive." ^ George William 
Curtis says: "There was a chirping, cheery, old-school 
air in his appearance which was undeniably Dutch. . . . 
He seemed, indeed, to have stepped out of his own 
books; and the cordial grace and humor of his address, 
if he stopped for a passing chat, were delightfully char- 
acteristic. He was then our most famous man of letters, 
but he was simply free from all self-consciousness and 
assumption and dogmatism."^ "His usual hours for 
literary work," says one reporting an interview with him 
in his last days, "were from morning till noon. . . . 
He had always been subject to moods and caprices, and 

1 C. D. Warner's life of Irving (American Men of Letters series), 
p. 48. 

^ Easy Chair, 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 121 

could never tell, when he took up the pen, how many 
hours would pass before he would lay it down. *But,' 
said he, ^ these capricious periods of the heat and glow 
of composition have been the happiest hours of my life. 
I have never found in anything outside of the four walls 
of my study any enjoyment equal to sitting at my writing- 
desk, with a clean page, a new theme, and a mind wide 
awake. . . . When I was in Spain, . . . and engaged 
on the Life of Columbus, I often wrote fourteen or fifteen 
hours out of the twenty-four.' He said that whenever 
he had forced his mind unwillingly to work, the product 
was worthless, and he invariably threw it away."^ 

Irving' s works fall into three groups : essays, sketches, 
and tales; descriptions of life in the West; biographies 
and histories The first group contains most of the 
writings by which he will be longest known. The 
Addisonian Oldstyle letters are merely promising per- 
formances for a youth of nineteen.^ The Salmagundi 
essays also take their cue from The Spectator^ but exceed 
it in frolicsomeness and youthful dash. "Our inten- 
tion," say the writers^ in their first number, "is simply 
to instruct the young, reform the old, correct the town, 
and castigate the age." The town took kindly to such 
good-natured and amusing correction, and the publica- 
tion was, for the times, a great success.^ Salmagundi 

1 P. M. living's life of Irving, Vol. IV., pp. 319-321. 

2 They were, however, generally copied into the newspapers of the 
day, and procured the young author a visit from C. B. Brown, who 
invited him to contribute to The Literary Magazine. 

3 J. K. Paulding and Irving's brother William were associated with 
him. William wrote the poems by " Pindar Cockloft." For Paulding's 
share, see P. M. Irving's life of Irving, Vol. I., pp. 176-178. 

4 It was reprinted in London in 1811 ; and in The Monthly Review was 
reviewed " much more favorably," says Irving, " than I had expected." 



122 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

can still be read with considerable pleasure, although 
the fun is often beaten out too thin and most of it is 
the effervescence of youth rather than really penetrating 
humor or wit. The papers contain, however, the germ 
of much of Irving' s subsequent work.^ A History of 
New York had for its main object '^to embody the tradi- 
tions" of that city '^ in an amusing form; . . . to clothe 
home scenes and places and familiar names with those 
imaginative and whimsical associations so seldom met 
with in our new country, but which live like charms and 
spells about the cities of the Old World." ^ A few de- 
scendants of old Dutch families, having more pedigree 
than humor, took the thing in a huff; but in general it 
was recognized as a humorous extravaganza, and met 
with a hearty welcome. It found some appreciative 
readers abroad. Scott declared that his sides were " sore 
with laughing" over it; and Dickens wrote, "Diedrich 
Knickerbocker I have worn to death in my pocket." 
The book has faults enough. It is tediously prolix; the 
humor is too elaborate, and is sometimes indelicate; 
and from beginning to end is heard a blare of trumpets 



1 " A chapter of * The Chronicles of the renowned and ancient city 
of Gotham ' . . . anticipates the humor of Knickerbocker ; there are 
traits of tenderness and pathos suggestive of the plaintive sentiment 
of the Sketch Book ; and the kindly humors of the Cockloft mansion 
ate an American Bracebridge Hall." — E. A. Duyckinck, as quoted in 
P. M. Irving's life of Irving, Vol. I., p. 211. 

2 The Author s Apology, written in 1848, as a preface to the new 
edition. He says, also, referring to the period of the Dutch domination : 
*' This, then, broke upon me as the poetic age of our city ; poetic from 
its very obscurity; and open ... to all the embellishments of heroic 
fiction. I hailed my native city as fortunate above all other American 
cities, in having an antiquity thus extending back into the regions of 
doubt and fable." Compare what was said on pages 109-111, about 
subjects for American literature. 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 123 

announcing that of course the whole thing is tremen- 
dously funny. There is in it, nevertheless, a large body 
of hearty and genuine laughter, and it improves as it 
goes on, the mock-heroic capture of Fort Christina 
being as breezy a passage as any in Fielding. Irving 
was to do more finished work than Knickerbocker's New 
Yorky but he would never again do anything quite so 
free- limbed and robust. The Sketch Book, as a whole, 
has perhaps been commonly rated too high, chiefly be- 
cause it was the work by which the author first became 
widely known. "Rip Van Winkle," "The Legend of 
Sleepy Hollow," "Westminster Abbey," " Stratf ord-on- 
Avon," "Little Britain," and two or three delightful 
pictures of English country life are about all the sketches 
that have really lived. One who nowadays reads the 
book through finds much of the thought and observation 
superficial, and the sentiment often overdone. The 
writer too consciously cherishes his emotions with a 
lively sense of their preciousness; and in "Rural Fune- 
rals," and elsewhere, he seems, like the author of A 
Sentimental Journey, to be smacking his lips delicately 
over the honey of tears. "Rip Van Winkle," however, 
is a masterpiece; the dreamy beauty of the Catskills, a 
poetic old legend, the quaintness of old Dutch life, and 
the bustle of small politics under a republic are all com- 
bined and harmonized with wonderful skill; and there 
is no finer character-sketch in our literature than the 
lovable old vagabond. Rip, as he goes slouching through 
the village, his arms full of children, a troop of dogs at 
his heels, and the shrill pursuing voice of Dame Winkle 
dying away in the distance. In Bracebridge Hall, 
which, in its main conception, is an expansion of cer- 



124 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

tain parts of The Sketch Booh, the author seems to be 
making the most of his material, dealing it out in small 
quantities well diluted. Partly to offset the resulting 
languor, several tales are introduced, rather flimsily con- 
nected with life at Bracebridge Hall but the best part 
of the book. " The Stout Gentleman " is one of Irving' s 
most life-like, acute, and suggestive sketches. "Dolph 
Heyliger" returns to Dutch life on the Hudson, where 
the creator of Diedrich Knickerbocker is always in 
happy mood. "The Student of Salamanca," with its 
pleasing union of love and adventure, points forward to 
the author's subsequent wanderings over the enchanted 
ground of Spanish history and romance.^ In Ta/es of 
a Traveller, placid description now becomes merely a 
framework for lively narrative. " Strange Stories by a 
Nervous Gentleman " are sometimes a little broad, and 
the one about the Young Italian is sentimental, romantic, 
and morbid in a way now gone out of fashion. In 
"The Italian Banditti " the story of the Young Robber, 
by its repulsive tragedy, jars unpleasantly upon the holi- 
day atmosphere of the rest of the section. " The Money- 
Diggers " describes Dutch life in New York without the 
diffuseness of Knickerbocker's History, but with less 
wealth of humor. " Buckthorne and His Friends " is 
the most enjoyable part of the book, containing some 
capital satire upon the trade of authorship, and, in its 
pictures of the experiences of a strolling player and 
literary adventurer, having much of the careless charm 
of Smollett and Goldsmith. In The Alhambra, Irving 

1 Irving's continued indebtedness to The Spectator is obvious. Squire 
Bracebridge is Sir Roger at his country-seat, and the Busy Man is Wil] 
Wimble put under a microscope. 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 125 

had a congenial theme, his dreamy luxuriance and inno- 
cent voluptuousness finding their appropriate food in 
the skies, ruins, and legends of sunny, romantic Spain. 
The book has a unique value for the practical Anglo- 
Saxon mind, helping it to catch something of the dreamy 
romance of life in old Granada. 

The second and third groups may be passed over 
lightly. The books on life in the West, of which Asto- 
ria is the best, contain many interesting incidents and 
scenes; but the descriptions were mostly done from 
notes furnished by others, and, furthermore, Irving was 
not quite the man to paint adequately the vast panorama 
of the settling of the West. The biographies and his- 
tories have great charm of style, although as historical 
writings their rank is in the second class. The Life of 
Goldsmith is at once delightful, and true to the spirit 
of that lovable, garret-haunting Bohemian. The Life 
of Columbus^ also, reproduces finely the atmosphere of 
large romance in the days of the great admiral. 

Washington Irving w^as not a great writer, but he was 
a very pleasing one. He lacked great passion, great 
imagination, great thought. His creative power was 
soon exhausted, and he turned to history for material. 
He did not see very deeply into human life. His satire, 
though kindly, is keen; but it is never great. His style 
sacrifices power to melody and grace; it can soothe and 
charin, but it cannot electrify; he could say in it all 
that he had to say, but King Lear or Sartor Resartiis 
could not be said in it. His humor never goes deep 
into human nature, and is often extravagant and some- 
times strained, although in his later w^orks it is frequently 
spontaneous and delicate. His sentiment and pathos 



126 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

are old-fashioned in manner, modern taste preferring 
a more dramatic or incidental handling of those dan- 
gerous elements. But although Irving will never again 
enjoy the same degree of fame which was his during the 
first half of the century, his position as an American 
classic is secure. He did two great services to American 
literature. He first revealed the romance of the Hudson 
and of old Dutch life, and he steeped his pages in the 
sunny tranquillity and placid beauty of his own spirit. 
American life has always lacked repose, never more so 
than now; and the modern reader may find wholesome 
refreshing in the pages of Washington Irving, forgetting 
there for a time "the weariness, the fever, and the fret'* 
of an electric civilization. 

A very different man and a more powerful writer was 
James Fenimore Cooper,^ burly, irascible, pugnacious, 
hearty in his loves and in his hates, the creator of the 

1 Life. Born at Burlington, NJ., Sept. 15, 1789. Father, of Quaker 
descent and a congressman ; mother, of Swedish descent. Family set- 
tled in Cooperstown, N.Y., 1790, where Mr. Cooper owned much land. 
Attended the village school ; then became the private pupil of an Albany 
Tector ; entered Yale, 1802 ; dismissed for participation in a frolic, 1805. 
Served before the mast in a merchant vessel, 1806-1807 ; served as mid- 
shipman in the navy, part of the time on Lakes Ontario and Champlain, 
1807-1811. Married Miss DeLancey, 1811 ; five daughters and two sons 
were born to him. Resided at Mamaroneck, 181 1-1814; Cooperstown, 
1814-1817; Scarsdale, 1817-1822; New York, 1822-1826. Lived in 
Europe, chiefly in France and Italy, 1826-1833 ; consul at Lyons, 1826- 

1829. Returned to America, 1833; lived by turns at New York and at 
Cooperstown. Died at Cooperstown, Sept. 14, 1851 ; wife died four 
months later. An Episcopalian. 

Works. Precaution, 1820. The Spy, 1821. The Pioneers, 1823. 
The Pilot, 1824 (imprint, 1823). Lionel Lincoln, 1825. The Last of 
the Mohicans, 1826. The Prairie, 1827. The Red Rover, 1828. The 
Wept of Wish-ton-Wish (= The Borderers), 1829. The Water-Witch, 

1830. The Bravo, 1831. The Heidenmauer, 1832. The Headsman, 
1833. The Monikin^ 1835. Homeward Bound, 1838. Home as 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 127 

American novel of adventure. His early life was an 
excellent preparation for his subsequent career as an 
author. His childhood was passed on the shores of the 
beautiful Otsego lake, at the edge of the primeval forest, 
where the grandeur and wild beauty of nature in the 
New World could sink their impressions deep into his 
youthful imagination. He made the acquaintance of 
trappers and old Indian-fighters, from whom he heard 
many a thrilling tale and gained some knowledge of 
vvoodcraft. He knew the sailor's life on the ocean and 
the Great Lakes by experience as a common seaman and 
as an officer in the navy. He was thus unwittingly 
acquiring a store of material of great literary value; and 
his three years at college, although they were rather idle 
ones, must have given him some literary culture. But 
for a long time the thought of commencing author seems 
never to have occurred to him. He married young; 
resigned from the navy at his wife's request; and, having 
inherited a comfortable property, settled down content- 
edly to the management of it and to the joys of family 

Found (= Eve EfRngham), 1838. The History of the Navy of the 
United States of America, 1839 ; abridged edition, 1841. The Path- 
finder, 1840. Mercedes of Castile, 1840. The Deerslayer, 1841. The 
Two Admirals, 1842. The Wing-and-Wing {= The Jack o' Lantern), 
1842. Wyandotte, 1843. Ned Meyers [the life of one of Cooper's 
shipmates], 1843. Afloat and Ashore, 1844. Miles Wallingford 
(= Lucy Hardinge) [sequel to Afloat and Ashore], 1844. Satanstoe, 
1845. The Chainbearer, 1846. Lives of Distinguished American 
Naval Officers, 1846. The Redskins (= Ravensnest), 1846. The 
Islets of the Gulf, 1846-1848 iu Graham s Magazine ; 1848 in book form, 
as Jack Tier (= Captain Spike). The Crater (= Mark's Reef), 1847. 
The Oak Openings {= The Bee Hunter), 1848. The Sea Lions, 1849. 
The Ways of the Hour, 1850. The titles of the English editions, when 
they differed from the American, are given in parentheses. Cooper 
also wrote several tales for Grahavis Magazine, ten volumes of travels 
-ind a good deal of controversial matter. 



128 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

life. He was thirty years old before he wrote his first 
novel, and even then his plunge into the literary life 
was the result of accident and caprice. One day, while 
reading an English novel to his wife, he suddenly stopped 
and said, " I believe I could write a better story myself." 
A challenge to do so aroused him to the attempt, and 
the result was Precaution^ a dull novel of English life, 
teaching the need of care in entering upon matrimony. 
The book was a failure, and deserved to be. Still, it 
showed some promise, and his friends urged him to 
try again. They counselled well, for The Spy was an 
immense success, and made its author famous at home 
and abroad. 

Cooper now removed to New York City, where he 
became a prominent figure and founded a club, to which 
Bryant, Halleck, Verplanck, Chancellor Kent, and other 
brilliant men belonged. The novels which he put forth 
with a rapidity rivalling Scott's raised his reputation 
higher and higher.^ The income from their sale repaired 
his somewhat damaged fortune, and enabled him to take 
an extended European tour with his family. In Paris 
he received the most flattering attentions from the leaders 
of society; Scott in his diary for November 6, 1826, 
speaking of a gathering at the Princess Galitzin's, says, 
" Cooper was there, so the Scotch and American lions 
took the field together." Cooper was charmed with 
French society, and the skies and scenery of Italy he 
passionately loved. But he was the same sturdy patriot 



1 " I dined yesterday ... in a company of authors. . . . Mr. 
Cooper engrossed the whole conversation, and seems a httle giddy 
with the great success his works have met with." — Letter by Bryant, 
April 24, 1824, in his life by Godwin, Vol. I., p. 189. 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 129 

as before. . European, and especially English, criticism 
of the United States, often ignorant, prejudiced, or 
condescending, aroused all the fighter in him, and in 
works of fiction ^ and public letters he took up cudgels 
for his country. He soon got himself cordially hated, 
and even some American newspapers censured him 
severely for "flouting his Americanism throughout 
Europe.'* Thus wounded in the house of his friends 
while fighting their battles. Cooper returned to America 
after seven years' absence, aggrieved and irritated. 
Contrasting the United States with the older civilization 
of Europe, he found much that needed correction, and 
he went at the work with his favorite blunt-headed 
weapon. He speedily had a hornets' nest about his 
ears; but it was not in him to run. For years the lion- 
hearted fellow — would that he had also had the wisdom 
of the serpent ! — did battle almost single-handed with 
the press of America, even carrying the matter into the 
courts, where he won suit after suit for libel. It was a 
rufiling and fruitless quarrel. But although it embit- 
tered Cooper's later years and absorbed much of his vast 
energy, it did not prevent him from doing a deal of 
other work, including two of his best novels. His last 
days he spent almost wholly in the beautiful region of 
his childhood, busy with labors and projects, and 
blessed in the domestic love which, like oil on troubled 
waters, spread a circle of calm around the old sailor 
and fighter even when his voyage was stormiest. The 
end came somewhat suddenly at last, his vigorous 
constitution breaking down at several points simul- 

'^ Notions of the Americans (1828), The Bravo, The Heidenmauer^ 
The Headsman, 



130 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

taneously; but in his sixty- two years he had lived much 
and well. 

Of Cooper's thirty- two novels not more than half have 
ever been much read, and eight are far superior to all 
the rest. The reasons for the inferiority of the poorer 
works are obvious. There was a brilliant story-teller in 
Cooper, but there was also a prosy moralist and reformer; 
and when circumstances called the latter to the front, 
it went hard with the story-teller. Thus in The Heiden- 
mauer^ The Manikins, and The Redskins, three of the 
worst novels, the narrative is insufferably tedious, while 
the satire is heavy and the ideas uninteresting. The 
same preaching tendency is responsible for those in- 
terminable reflections and conversations which come 
between scenes of thrilling action in Wing- and- Wifig, 
Afloat and Ashore, Homeward Bound, and other novels 
with a good story. Furthermore, Cooper's inability to 
get under way quickly, to make love affairs interesting, 
and to handle humorous characters successfully — limita- 
tions which injure even his best novels — are simply fatal 
to those in which the compensating merits are few or 
altogether wanting. 

Of the eight novels which by common consent are 
much the best. The Pilot and The Red Rover are stories 
of the sea. Cooper's originality here is not substantially 
lessened by the fact that it was Scott's The Pirate which, 
by its defects, set him to writing The Pilot; for the 
American sailor not only used sea-lingo more accurately 
and fully than the Scotch landsman had, bui he also 
made the plot turn and the interest depend chiefly upon 
the events at sea. In this very true sense Cooper was 
the creator of the sea-novel; and he is never more in 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 131 

his element than when once fairly afloat with a good ship 
under him, a storm brewing on the horizon, a corvette 
or a wicked but interesting pirate coming up rapidly on 
the weather-bow, an old tar drawing the long-bow in the 
forecastle, an^ the weather-beaten captain or mysterious 
pilot preparing to execute some manoeuvre which shall 
outwit elements and enemy alike. In scenes of storm 
and of battle Cooper is nothing less than great. He 
has an apparently inexhaustible store of incidents, for 
his marine adventures are as varied as they are interest- 
ing. He describes nautical movements with enough 
precision and detail to give the landsman an agreeable 
sense of novelty and a comfortable assurance that the 
thing was properly done, yet avoids that excess of tech- 
nical language which only perplexes and fatigues. And 
he succeeds in making one realize something of the true 
sailor's love for the sea and for his vessel; we groan 
with Long Tom as the Ariel drives to her death on a lea 
shore. But his best sea-characters are not interesting 
merely because they are sailors. They are also real and 
true men. The lank Yankee tar, with a hitch to his 
trousers and a crotchet in his head, as good at spinning 
a yarn or criticising the tactics of his superior as at 
splicing a rope or coolly manning a gun in the heat of 
action; the rough sailing-master, who maybe swears too 
much, but takes tender care of his old mother on shore 
and dies with his thoughts divided between her and his 
duties; the bluff captain, cheerily concealing his anxiety, 
in time of peril, from the delicate women committed to 
his care; the gallant young naval officer, American or 
English, who manfully risks life and love in his country's 
cause, — these and other sea- types live vividly in Cooper's 



132 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

pages; and the reader is braver and more generous- 
hearted for knowing them. 

The Spy stands somewhat by itself, being more strictly 
a historical novel than any other of the best eight.^ Its 
portrait of Washington is hardly recognizable; but its 
sympathetic pictures of the embarrassing position of a 
mild Tory,^ and of the lawless border-warfare, are true 
to the times. The chief interest of the book, however, 
centres in Harvey Birch, the spy, who is one of the 
author's best portraitures for the pathos of his situation 
and the moral dignity of his character.^ But Cooper's 
most distinctive work is his Leatherstocking tales.^ He 
was the creator of the novel of Indian adventure, and 
his followers are not his rivals. He was fortunate in 
being near enough to the life of Indian and trapper 
without being too near; in consequence, he could make 
his scenes and actors at once lifelike and ideal. He 
was also fortunate in his temperament. There was a 
vein of large poetry in him, which enabled him to paint 



1 The story of the spy himself is founded upon fact, Cooper getting 
it from John Jay. Of the poorer novels, Satanstoe gives a faithful 
picture of colonial life in New York at the middle of the eighteenth 
century, and describes scenes connected with Abercrombie's defeat on 
Lake George in 1758 ; Mercedes deals with the first voyage of Columbus. 

2 Cooper's wife came of a Tory family. 

3 The Spy was soon translated into all the principal languages of 
Europe. It is on record that a distinguished French spy under Louis 
Philippe drew his inspiration from the example of Birch. In a book on 
Nicaragua, published the year after Cooper's death, the author says 
that The Spy " seems to be better known in Spanish America than any 
other work in the English language ; I found it everywhere." See 
Lounsbury's life of Cooper, pp. 37, 38. 

4 The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The 
Pioneers, The Prairie. This order, which is the chronological one with 
reference to the life of Leatherstocking, is easily remembered by the 
fact that the titles follow the order of the alphabet. 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 133 

nature in the New World with a powerful brush — the 
beauty of the wood-encircled lake, the grandeur and 
solitude of the unpeopled forest, the oceanlike ex- 
panse of the prairie. He was also, like his great con- 
temporary Scott, a natural fighter, and flung himself with 
robust joy into descriptions of deadly peril and hair- 
breadth escapes. It is the abundance of thrilling incident 
in these novels that gives them their absorbing interest, 
and criticisms upon their faults in other respects conse- 
quently fall to the ground. We forgive the young men 
for their insipid love-making, because they fight so well. 
We forgive the "females" for their lovely helplessness, 
since they exist merely to be rescued. We perhaps 
ought to forgive Leatherstocking for his ill-timed gar- 
rulity, — although most of us probably do not, — seeing 
that it is our interest in his daring, coolness, and skill 
which makes us impatient of his philosophy. But it 
would be unjust to Cooper to imply that none of his 
land-characters are interesting in themselves. Chingach- 
gook and Uncas awake admiration for their noble quali- 
ties; The Last of the Mohicans is made really tragic by 
the pathetic death of the young chief. Cooper's good 
Indians may never have existed outside his pages; but 
as ideal figures they are certainly interesting inside his 
pages, and for a romancer that is the main thing. ^ 
Leatherstocking is the greatest of the author's creations. 

1 There is no need to renew the controversy about the truthfulness 
of Cooper's delmeation of Indian character ; the topic is already as 
bald as if the Big Serpent had passed his knife around the head of it. 
But the reader may at least be reminded that Cooper knew and studied 
Indians, and that he represented most of them as drunken, cruel, and 
treacherous ; if therefore he endowed a few with qualities not in fact 
possessed by any, he doubtless did it deliberately as a legitimate device 
of the romancer's art. 



134 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

Not the least of his merits as a figure in the novels is 
the deep and poetic harmony which exists between his 
nature and the vast solitudes in which he lives. He is 
a middle term between civilization and nature; the 
buckskin hamadryad of the New World; an American 
Pan, with a Christian soul instead of heathen hoofs. 
The consistency with which his character is maintained 
is surprising, especially when one remembers that the 
last novel in which he appears was written eighteen years 
after the first. The difficulty was further increased by 
the fact that he was first conceived as an old man, and 
his youth described last of all, while the other periods 
of his life were filled-in in very erratic order. Yet he is 
fundamentally the same man from beginning to end, the 
secondary differences caused by differences in age and 
situation making the portrayal only the more deeply 
consistent. The Pioneers is the poorest of the series; 
for Cooper's interest in the scenes of his youth led him 
into too much description at the start, and the subse- 
quent action is comparatively tame. The Pathfinder 
suffers a good deal from the clumsy humor, the tedious 
dialogues on love and religion, and Pathfinder's un- 
natural role as a lover; but the running the gauntlet 
into the fort and the scenes on the island are superb. 
"Its interest is tremendous," said Balzac. The Last of 
the Mohicans will probably always be the favorite with 
the majority of readers, for its almost uninterrupted rush 
of thrilling incident. But The Deerslayer has an un- 
rivalled freshness in its pictures of nature and of the 
young hunter and the young brave; and in The Prairie 
the account of the squatter's grim justice and of the 
quickening of his own conscience contains a moral 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 135 

depth and a stern strength not elsewhere seen, while the 
tranquil death of the aged hunter has an autumnal 
beauty. 

Cooper is the only American author who has been 
widely read on the continent of Europe, and he is a 
worthy representative of the largeness and primitive 
vigor of life in the New World. The romance of the 
American forest and j^rairie, of the American Indian, 
hunter, scout, and pioneer, allures cultured and uncul- 
tured alike through his pages; and in the successive 
removes of Leatherstocking, as he retreats before the 
westward-setting tide of civilization, may be read the 
New World's epic of action in the conquest of a conti- 
nent. But the culture, the deeper thought, the humor, 
and many other phases of American life are poorly, or 
not at all, represented in Cooper's writings. His work- 
manship is careless. His style at its best has rapid 
motion and rich color — the two qualities most needed 
in the semi-historical novel of action; but it is un- 
polished, and often slipshod, heavy, and diffuse. In 
the conduct of the story he shows much skill, espe- 
cially in single scenes, excelling in the art of prolonged 
and breathless suspense.^ His character-drawing is 
primitive in method and narrow in range. A few 

1 A favorite method with him is to open with a series of exciting 
events, which have a certain unity by themselves; a short lull follows, 
after which the main action begins. The method allows of variety and 
length of action without fatigue, and the first series of incidents also 
serves to make the reader acquainted with the characters, so that in the 
main action they have an added interest as old and well-tried friends. 
In The Pathfinder the preliminary action ends with the entrance into 
the fort ; in The Prairie, with the squatter's gaining possession of the 
rock; in The Pilot ,\\\\h the ship's escape from the breakers; in The Red 
Rover, with the shipwreck of the hero and heroine and tlieir rescue by 
the Rover, 



136 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

simple and noble types he could depict admirably; 
for the rest, he resorted to pasteboard and the shears, 
or set a wooden manikin to capering stiff-jointedly 
in most doleful-merry fashion.^ He has been often 
compared to Scott. The points of likeness are ob- 
vious. But the two men were, after all, very different, 
and the American novelist is on the whole decidedly 
inferior. He is the equal of the Scotchman, if not his 
superior, in feeling for the large aspects of nature, in 
pictures of sea-life, and in rapid, intense action. But 
the Wizard of the North is superior in style, in humor, 
in pathos, in command of the uncanny and supernatu- 
ral, in character-portrayal, and in power and sweep of 
imagination. Nevertheless, Cooper in his own more 
limited field is great; and his genius is more dis- 
tinctively American than that of either of his two im- 
mediate predecessors in prose fiction. 

William Cullen Bryant^ came of the purest New • 

1 One phase of his careless workmanship is his suddenly thrusting 
some mannerism of speech into the mouth of a character and making 
him thenceforth use it continually; thus Cap, in The Pathfinder, is pre- 
sented with the word "circumstances" in Chapter XIII., and thence- 
forth harps upon it continually to the end of the book. Consistency 
of character is sometimes sacrificed to the needs of the plot, as when 
Sergeant Dunham and Cap, in the same novel, are suddenly made 
hyper-suspicious of Jasper Western, because the action required that 
he should be deprived of his command. 

2 Life. Born in Cummington, Mass., Nov. 3, 1794. Attended 
district school; studied Latin and Greek with two clergymen; spent 
seven months at Williams College as a sophomore, 1810-1811 ; studied 
law at Worthington and Bridgewater, 1811-1815. Adjutant in militia, 
1816-1817. Practised law at Plainfield, 1816 ; at Great Barrington, 
1816-1825. Married Frances Fairchild, 1821; two daughters were 
born to him. Editor of The New York Review, 1825-1826; an editor 
and part owner of The United States Review, 1826-1827; assistant 
editor of the New York Evenmg Post, 1826-1829; editor-in-chief, with 
partial ownership, 1829-1878. Visited lUinois, 1832, 1841, 1846; 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 137 

England stock, one of his paternal ancestors having set- 
tled in Massachusetts about 1632, and his mother being a 
descendant of John Alden. The poet spent the first thirty 
years of his-life in Massachusetts, where he wrote many 
of his best poems; but for half a century he lived in New 



the South, 1843, 1873; Europe, 1834-1836, 1845, 1S49, 1857-1858, 1866-^ 
1867; Cuba, 1849; Europe and the Orient, 1852-1853 ; West Indies 
and Mexico, 1872. Bought estate near Roslyn, Long Island, 1843; the 
old homestead at Cummington, 1865. Wife died, 1865. Gave public 
library to Cummington, 1872. Died in New York City, June 12, 1878 ; 
buried at Roslyn. A Unitarian. 

Works. The Embargo, 1808 ; second edition, 1809, with " The Span- 
ish Revolution " and other poems. Poems, 1821 — " The Ages," " To a 
Waterfowl," " Fragment from Simonides," " Inscription for the Entrance 
to a Wood," " The Yellow Violet," "Sono^" (Soon as the glazed, etc.), 
"Green River," " Th anatopsis ." Poems, 1832 — included eighty-two 
new poems: "Forest Hymn." "The Rivulet," "The Massacre at 
Scio," "Monument Mountain," "Song of Marion's Men," "The 
Hurricane," " Summer Wind," " A Winter Piece," " Oh Fairest of the 
Rural Maids," "June," "To the Fringed Gentian^" "To a Cloud," 
"After a Tempest," " Lines on Revisiting the Country," "The Death 
of the Flowers," etc.; reprinted, London, 1832. " Medfield " and 
"The Skeleton's Cave," in Tales of the Glauber Spa, 1832. Poems, 
1834 — included four new poems: "The Prairie," etc. Poems, 1836 — 
included twelve new poems : " The Living Lost," " Earth," " The 
Hunter of the Prairies," etc. The Fountain and Other Poems, 1842 — 
consisted of fifteen new poems: "The Green Mountain Boys," "An 
Evening Reverie," " The Painted Cup," "The Antiquity of Freedom," 
etc. The W^hite-Footed Deer and Other Poems, 1844 — consisted of ten 
new poems : " Noon," " The Crowded Street," " A Summer Ramble,'" 
"A Hymn of the Sea," etc.; reprinted, with the previous poems, as 
The Poetical Works, London, 1844. Poems, 1847 — included two new 
poems. Letters of a Traveller, 1850 ; second series, 1859. Poems, 
1854 — included ten new poems : " The Unknown Way," " Oh Mother 
of a Mighty Race," "The Land of Dreams," "The Snow-Shower," 
"A Rain Dream," "Robert of Lincoln," etc. Thirty Poems, 1863 
(imprint, 1864) — included twenty-seven new poems: "The Planting 
of the Apple Tree," "The Wind and Stream," "The Song of the 
Sower," "The Cloud on the Way," "The Tides," "A Day Dream," 
" Waiting by the Gate," " Sella," " The Little People of the Snow," etc. 
Letters from the East, 1869. Translation of the Iliad, 1870. Transla- 
tion of the Odyssey, 1871-1872. Orations and Addresses, 1873. 



138 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

York, and may therefore most conveniently be classed 
with the Knickerbocker school. His early surroundings 
were favorable for the development of a poet of nature. 
In natural beauty western Massachusetts resembles the 
English lake district, — streams, lakes, valleys, and 
mountains combining into a whole of singular variety 
and charm; it is no wonder that the boy was from 
" earliest years a delighted observer of external nature." ^ 
Nor was the stimulus of books wanting. Bryant's father, 
a physician and a state legislator, was a man of literary 
tastes, writing respectable verse himself, and his library 
was pretty well stocked with the best English writers. 
The poet was precocious, knowing his letters at sixteen 
months and writing verses at eight years, while The 
Embargo was an astonishing performance for a green 
country lad of thirteen.^ He was an ardent student. 
Greek fascinated him, and he made rapid progress in it. 
His father's circumstances not allowing him, however, 
to complete a college course, he gave himself with fidelity 
to the study of the law. But nature and poetry were his 
deepest love, and he could not forego them altogether. 
It was just as he was about to begin his law studies that 
he wrote Thanatopsis^ in the autumn of 181 1; and four 
years later, climbing the hills af sunset to his first place 
of trial as a practitioner of the law, he saw a waterfowl 
"darkly painted on the crimson sky," and his law career 
began with an immortal poem written that very night. 
An unfortunate love affair threw a dark cloud over him 

1 Autobiography, in Godwin's life of Bryant, Vol. I., p. 25. 

2 In early years he was accustomed, he says, to pray to God "with 
great fervor" that he " might receive the gift of poetic genius, and 
write verses that might endure." — Autobiography, in Godwin's life of 
Bryant, Vol. I., p. 26. 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 139 

for awhile during his legal studies; but it passed away, 
and a letter written in 18 14 shows that the author of 
Thanatopsis was not above enjoying balls and sailing- 
parties. The War of 18 12 meantime was becoming 
more and more unpopular in New England, and talk 
of secession was not uncommon. The future editor of 
The Evening Post and author of Not Yet was a rather 
warm secessionist in those days, joining the militia "for 
the defence of the state " in case it should be necessary 
to resist the central government.^ But the muse, and 
not Bellona, was about to bring him fame. Doctor Bryant 
had discovered the manuscript of Thanatopsis and of a 
few other poems, hidden in the pigeon-holes of a desk; 
and when his friend Phillips, one of the editors of The 
North A77ierican Review^ asked him for a contribution 
from his talented son, he sent Thanatopsis and the 
Inscription for the E7itrance to a Wood, Both poems 
appeared in the Review for September, 181 7, and were 
recognized by the judicious as the best poetry that had 
yet been published in America.^ Bryant now became 
an occasional contributor in verse and prose to The 
North Afneiican Review diXidi to Dana's The Idle Man ; 
and in 1825 he threw up the law altogether, although he 
was now getting some reputation in it,^ and, removing 

1 " The force now to be organized may not be altogether employed 
against a foreign enemy ; it may become necessary to wield it against an 
intestine foe." " It will be time enough [next June] to tell the world 
that the original compact between the States is dissolved [i.e., if it should 
then be necessary]." — Bryant's letters in 1814 and 1815, in Godwin's 
life of him, Vol. I., pp. 129, 135. 

2 When R. H. Dana heard Thanatopsis read from manuscript, he 
said, " Phillips, you have been imposed upon ; no one on this side of 
the Atlantic is capable of writing such verses." — Godwin's life of 
Bryant, Vol. I., p. 150. 

3 He was called to argue cases at New Haven and before the 
Supreme Court at Boston. 



140 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

to New York, began that long editorial career which 
was to end only with his life. It is not necessary to 
follow it in detail. As editor of the Post^ which he 
conducted with great ability and high principle, he 
wielded a steadily increasing influence. He became in 
time the foremost citizen of New York, universally re- 
spected and in his old age revered. The increasing pros- 
perity of his newspaper enabled him to take those many 
foreign trips which broadened his view without in the 
least diminishing his deep and intelligent Americanism. 
It also surrounded him and his loved ones with abundant 
comforts in declining years, and helped to prolong his 
days, in moderate toil, to an age reached in such vigor 
by very few among the sons of men. And when at last 
he fell, he fell as the granite column falls, smitten from 
without, but sound within.^ 

Bryant's hale old age was due in part to heredity, his 
ancestors being famous for longevity and strength.^ But 
in youth he was puny, and throughout most of his life 
he subjected himself to a careful regimen in food, drink, 
and exercise.^ Mr. Godwin gives this picture of him at 

1 On May 29 the wonderful old man, then in his eighty-fourth year, 
made an address in Central Park at the raising of a statue to Mazzini, 
the Italian patriot. His uncovered head was for a time exposed to the 
full glare of the sun. Shortly after, while entering a house, he fell 
backward, striking his head upon the stone steps ; concussion of the 
brain and paralysis resulted. 

2 The poet says of his father, " He would take up a barrel of cider 
and lift it into a cart over the wheel." — Godwin's life of Bryant, Vol. 1., 

P-3. 

3 He thus described his manner of life at seventy-seven : " I rise 
early, . . . about half-past five; in summer half an hour, or even an 
hour, earlier. Immediately, ... I begin a series of exercises. . . . 
These are performed with dumb-bells, . . . with a pole, and a light 
chair swung round my head. After a full hour . . . passed in this 
manner, I bathe from head to foot. . . . Animal food I never take at 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 141 

middle age:' "He was of . . . medium height, spare 
in figure, with a clean-shaven face, unusually large head, 
bright eyes, and a wearied, severe, almost saturnine ex- 
pression of' countenance. One, however, remarked at 
once the exceeding gentleness of his manner, and a rare 
sweetness in the tone of his voice, as well as an extraor- 
dinary purity in his selection and pronunciation of 
English."^ In old age he had the look of a Hebrew 
prophet. With a reference to this majesty of appearance 
and the yet greater majesty of his high soul, George 
William Curtis said : "We saw in his life the simple 
dignity which we associate with the old republics. So 
Lycurgus may have ruled in Sparta, so Cato may have 
walked in Rome — an uncrowned regality in that vener- 
able head." "^ Yet with all his great qualities, Bryant has 
been accused of being cold. Hawthorne found him so.^ 
Even as a young man he had a certain reserve, which 
allowed of no familiarities. He did not wear his heart 
on his sleeve, and he could not tolerate gush. But those 
who knew him intimately found "hidden depths of feel- 
ing " under his "calm and unimpassioned manner";* 

breakfast. Tea and coffee I never touch at any time. . . . After 
breakfast I occupy myself for a while with my studies ; and when in 
town I walk down to the office of the ' Evening Post,' nearly three miles 
distant, and after about three hours return, always walking, whatever be 
the weather or the state of the streets. ... In the country I dine early, 
. . . making my dinner mostly of vegetables. . . My drink is water, 
yet I sometimes, though rarely, take a glass of wine." — Godwin's life 
of Bryant, Vol. II., pp. 297-298. 

1 Life of Bryant, Vol. I., p. 334. 

2 Commemorative address on Bryant, in Orations and Addresses, 
Vol. III., p. 360. 

3 " A very pleasant man to associate with, but rather cold, I should 
imagine, if one should seek to touch his heart with one's own." — 
French and Italian Note-Books, May 22, 1858. 

^ Godwin's life of Bryant, Vol. II., p. 309. 



142 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

his home life was beautiful; and his friendships, though 
few, were strong and lasting.^ Yet intellect and abstract 
principle were a large part of his nature, and Haw- 
thorne's amended phrase states the case well: "He is 
not eminently an affectionate man.'*^ 

Bryant wrote excellent prose. His letters of travel, 
full of keen observation, are written in delightful Eng- 
lish. He developed a peculiar talent for commemora- 
tive addresses, the one on Washington Irving being 
perhaps the most notable. His tales were less success- 
ful, as he had not much narrative gift. He is famous 
chiefly as a poet of nature. Yet other elements appear 
frequently in his verse — the Indians; freedom, slavery, 
and war; love; the fanciful and the supernatural; medi- 
tations on life and death. In a few poems he attempted 
humor, but his Mayflower ancestry laid heavy hands 
upon it.^ His treatment of love, also, is slight and 
incidental. Of the lines suggested by slavery, freedom, 
and war, only the Song qf Marion's Men allures to many 
re-readings; in that one hears the very gallop of those 
light-heeled troopers, making half a holiday of their 

!■ His intimacy with R. H. Dana was lifelong. Upon first going to 
New York, he became one of the little circle of literati and artists who 
soon formed themselves into " The Sketch Club,'' successor to Cooper's 
"Bread and Cheese Lunch" and forerunner of "The Century Club." 
Yet Mr. Godwin says that when he first became acquainted with the 
poet, in 1836, he " was surprised to observe how few habitual visitors he 
seemed to have," and that " this seclusion was due partly to choice," 
but that in later years " he began to feel more and more the need of 
intimate associations," and in old age his friends observed "how he 
had mellowed with time, the irritabilities of his earlier days had been 
wholly overcome, his reluctance to mingle with men was quite gone." 
— Life of Bryant, Vol. L, pp. 335, 336, 408, Vol. IL, p. 390. 

2 French and Italian Note-Books^ J^^e 9, 1858. 

3 About the year 1823, Bryant even wrote a farce, The Heroes^ in 
ridicule of duelling, and tried in vain to get it staged in New York. 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 143 

plucky and picturesque fight for freedom. The Indian 
poems are not very successful. It is difficult to realize 
the woes of an Indian who says " methinks " and describes 
the white man's coach-and-four in the manner of a Queen 
Anne poetaster : — 

^i(i\ji'^--^ ' And prancing steeds, in trappings gay, 
Whirl the bright chariot o'er the way.i 

Bryant succeeds better when he uses Indian customs and 
beliefs as a setting for universal human passion, as in 
The Indian Girl's Lament and Monument Mountain; 
or merely describes the Indian without attempting to 
make him talk, as in The Disinterred Warrior, 

Nearly all of Bryant's best poetry has to do with 
nature, life and death, or creations of the fancy. The 
nature poetry and the meditations on life and death are 
often combined in the same poem. His favorite method 
was to begin by describing some natural object — a 
river, a prairie, a breeze, — and then imagine the various 
phases of human life that had been or would be asso- 
ciated with it; a commonplace and rather cheap device, 
that does not improve with repetition. The same love 
of broad surveys appears also in poems wholly medita- 
tive, as The Ages, The Crowded Street, and The Flood 
of Years, which represent his early, middle, and later 
work, and show how persistent was this tendency of his 
reflective, non-dramatic temperament. None of his 
purely meditative poems is remarkable.^ In fact, Bryant 

1 An Indian at the Burial-Place of his Fathers. 

2 The Ages has been much over-praised ; its handling of the Spen- 
serian stanza is stiff, and its review of history crude. The Crowded 
Street and Waiting by the Gate rise Httle above the level of the better 
class of newspaper poetry. The Flood of Years is dignified common- 
place. 



144 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

loses the better part of his strength when he loses contact 
with the earth. Thanatopsis is his greatest reflective 
poem largely because its central thought rises so directly 
out of the contemplation of a sublime fact of nature, 
and is practically one with it. As the youthful poet 
gazed upon the face of nature at the fall of the leaf, and, 
sending his thought over the earth, back into the past, 
and onward into the future, beheld death everywhere as 
a great natural fact, something of the large steadfastness 
and solemn calm of the All-Mother came into his soul 
and gave birth to this poem : since death is natural and 
universal, it must be well; the sublimity of the eternal 
process stills the spirit's petty flutterings, and brings a 
high, stern calm. R. H. Stoddard has said that Thana- 
topsis is " the greatest poem ever written by so young 
a man." "What renders it more remarkable," adds 
Mr. Godwin, "is the suddenness with which it breaks 
away from everything he had hitherto attempted." Up 
to this time his verses had been conventional though 
clever echoes of English poetry of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. But here was a poem which " came out of the heart 
of our primeval woods, "^ and has a style and a music 
of its own — stately but not pompous, solemn but not 
heavy, combining the richness of the organ with the 
freedom of the swaying woods and the rolling sea.^ 

1 Godwin's life of Bryant, Vol. I., p. 99. 

2 Just before writing Thanatopsis he had been reading Henry Kirke 
White's poems, much taken with their " melancholy tone," Blair's 
Grave, Porteus on Death, Southey's shorter poems, and Cowper's 
The Task. The germ of the thought, as Mr. Godwin points out, is in 
these lines by Blair : — 

What is this world ? 
What but a spacious burial-field unwalled, 
Strewed with death's spoils, the spoils of animals 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 145 

In other of the nature poems reflection sinks to a 
subordinate place or is omitted altogether. The In- 
scription for the Entrance to a Wood breathes the very 
essence of, woodland life — the calm shade, the cool 
breeze, the barky moisture, the glad animal and insect 
life, the mossy antiquity, the warm sunshine striking in 
through the swaying treetops, the green wildness and 
freedom of it all. It smells of the moist earth more 
than anything in Wordsworth, is a step nearer to the 
essence of primitive nature. In A Forest Hymn there 
is the same breath of the fresh woods, with more eleva- 
tion of thought; Bryant's sense of the presence of God 
in nature is as immediate and real as Wordsworth's, 
but is not so deep and large, and in style the poem 
nowhere approaches the sublimity of parts of Tintern 
Abbey, But Bryant is again superior to Wordsworth in 
the larger and sterner phases of the elemental feeling for 
nature. The Hurricane has no parallel in the poems of 
the English poet for its imaginative abandon to the 

Savage and tame, and full of dead men's bones. 
The very turf on which we tread once lived, 
And we that live must lend our carcasses 
To cover our own offspring ; in their turns 
They, too, must cover theirs. 

Godwin continues, in a passage which deserves transcription : 
"The versification may, perhaps, bear traces of Cowper and Southey, 
although it is more terse, compact, energetic, and harmonious than 
either of them; its pauses, cadences, rhythms are different, and it has a 
movement of its own, a deep organ-like roll, which corresponds to the 
sombre nature of the theme. A lingering memory of the sublime 
lamentations of Job, an impression from the Greeks of that ineffable 
sadness which moans through even their lightest music, and his recent 
readings, may all have conspired to influence its tone ; but the real 
inspiration of it came from the infinite solitudes of our forests, stretching 
interminably inland over the silent work of death ever going on within 
their depths." — Life of Bryant, Vol. I., p. 99. 
L 



146 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

delirium of storm. In Summer Wind, "fierce sun- 
shine," "dazzling light," "bright clouds," and "brazen 
sky " are depicted with Greek-like severity and radiance; 
and in After a Tempest and June the sense of sunshine 
lying rich and golden along the earth is conveyed power- 
fully with a few words. In The Prairie earth and sky 
are felt in their elemental simplicity and largeness. Yet 
the lighter, prettier, more delicate phases of nature are 
handled with joyousness and grace in Green River, The 
Yellow Violet, To the Fringed Gentian, Robert of Lincoln, 
and other poems; while the poet's minute and loving 
knowledge of nature is shown almost everywhere.^ Bry- 
ant moralizes nature too much. In To a Waterfowl the 
lesson springs naturally from his poetic feeling of fellow- 
ship with the bird — both are creatures of the Great 
God, "lone wandering, but not lost"; it therefore 
deepens the spiritual significance, without injury to the 
poetry, although it might have been introduced with 
less formality. But in several other poems the moral is 
obtruded, and nature seems to be degraded into a text. 
Bryant is most like Wordsworth in the poems which 
speak of the calming and elevating influence of nature 
upon man.^ The two poets are also alike in having 
written little upon mountains or the sea. But in gen- 

1 There is special delicacy and beauty of observation in The Death of 
the Flowers, The Snow-Shower, A Rain-Dream. Bryant's friends speak 
of the range and accuracy of the knowledge of natural objects which he 
would incidentally reveal in the course of a walk. He was a skilled 
botanist. 

2 In 0>^ Fairest of the Rural Maids the similarity to Three Years She 
Grew is too close to be accidental. A Summer Ramble reminds one of 
To My Sister. The Yellow Violet suggests To the Daisy. Lines on 
Revisiting the Country, Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood, A Forest 
Hymn, and other poems, have striking points of resemblance to Tintern 
Abbey, 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 147 

eral Bryant is as original as Wordsworth. The English 
poet had a powerful effect upon him, but it was by un- 
locking the treasures in his own soul, not by setting 
him models for imitation.^ 

It has usually been said that Bryant had no poetic 
development, but this is not wholly true. His fancy was 
a late flower; and the poet who in youth wrote poems 
for old men, in age wrote charming verses for children. 
This new emphasis upon the fanciful appeared first in a 
few nature poems, as To a Cloudy The Painted Cup, and 
The Wind and Stream, It was accompanied by an un- 
successful attempt to handle the weird supernatural, in 
Catterskill Falls and The Strange Lady, But in later 
years the beautiful supernatural received delicate treat- 
ment in Sella and The Little People of the Snow} Bry- 
ant's translation of the Lliad and the Odyssey shows 
somewhat the fatigue of age ; it also fails to reproduce 
the rapidity and sustained poetical elevation of the 

1 Bryant first read the Lyrical Ballads in 18 10. " He said that, upon 
opening the book, a thousand springs seemed to gush up at once in his 
heart, and the face of Nature, of a sudden, to change into a strange 
freshness and Ufe." — R. H. Dana, as quoted in Godwin's Hfe of Bryant, 
Vol. I., p. 104. 

2 Bryant's workmanship, too, shows development in these poems. 
The blank verse is not the blank verse of Thanatopsis ; it is hghter, 
more rapid, as befits a story-poem, and, like the delicately sensuous 
style, seems to show the influence of Tennyson : — 

. . . The bride 
Stood in the blush that from her burning cheek 
Glowed down the alabaster neck, as morn 
Crimsons the pearly heaven half-way to the west. 
At once the harpers struck their chords ; a gush 
Of music broke upon the air; the youths 
All started to the dance. Among them moved 
The queenly Sella with a grace that seemed 
Caught from the swaying of the summer sea. 



148 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

original; yet on the whole it is probably the best ren- 
dering of Homer into English verse. 

Bryant's range was narrow, and even within it his 
really good work is small in amount. But his best 
poems have enduring value. His style is pure, terse, 
and strong. His verse has little elasticity and no magic, 
but is always correct and sometimes richly musical. 
His imagination was a bird of strong wing for short 
flights. He had no dramatic sense, little humor, and 
no intensity or warmth of passion. There was in him a 
good deal of the Puritan sternness and inflexibility; he 
lacked imaginative mobility and the grace of sympathy. 
But he had the Puritan virtues, too, for they were in his 
blood and had been nourished by the moral and religious 
atmosphere of a typical New England home.-^ Truth, 
justice, purity, reverence were the air in which his spirit 
lived, without which it would stifle; and these high 
qualities pervade his poetry and make it tonic. The 
wind that blows through it, though cold, is bracing. 
And his sternness is the sternness of granite — good to 
build upon. His name will endure as that of the poet 
who first gave large utterance to the voice of Nature in 
the New World. 

Several minor writers resident in the city or state of 
New York, belonging to a somewhat later day than those 
already mentioned, must be spoken of briefly before 
taking leave of the New York group. Herman Melville 

1 Speaking of his mother, Bryant says : " If in the discussion of pub- 
lic questions, I have . . . endeavored to keep in view the great rule of 
right without much regard to persons, it has been owing in a good ^ 
degree to the force of her example, which taught me never to counte- 
nance a wrong because others did." — Godwin's life of Bryant, Vol. I., 
p. 4. 



OTHER WRITERS. 149 

(1819-1891). wrote Typee (1846), a narrative of his life 
among cannibals in the South Seas; Moby Dick (1851), 
and other novels; The Piazza Tales (1856) ; Battle-Pieces 
(1866) and other poems and prose works; all showing 
much strength and talent. The Poems (1845) of 
William W. Lord (181 9-) have facility and sweetness, 
the influence of Coleridge and Keats being apparent 
in them; Christ in Hades (1851), in Miltonic blank 
verse, is heavy and obscure; \^m\. Andre (1856), a tragedy, 
has much nobility of tone. William R. Wallace (1819- 
188 1), whose earlier poems — The Battle of Tippecanoe 
(1837), Alban the Pirate (1848) — were modelled upon 
Scott and Byron, while his later — Meditations in America 
(185 1), etc. — are often Tennysonian, is now remem- 
bered only by his song. The Sivord of Bunker Hill (i 86 1) . 
John G. Saxe (1816-1887) w^as Hood's worthy successor 
iniHe knack of punning in verse; his humorous poems, 
as The Proud Miss Macbride (in Poeins^ 1850), and The 
Masquerade (1866), often have a moral under the fun; 
his more serious poems — Progress (1846), a satire; The 
Money- Ki7tg (1854); Clever Stories of Many Nations 
(1865); Leisure- Day Rhymes (1875), ^^c- — ^^e bright 
and clever; but all his work is superficial, greatly 
inferior to that of Holmes in penetrating sparkle. Wil- 
liam A. Butler (1825-1902) published novels and 
Poems (187 1 ), but his literary wardrobe is now practically 
reduced to Nothing to Wear (1857), an amusing satire 
on women of fashion. Alice Gary (1820-1871) was 
born in Ohio, but with her sister Phcebe, whose gifts 
were much more commonplace, removed to New York 
in 1852.^ She lives chiefly by her poems of personal 

^ The sisters jointly published Poems, 1850. Alice published Clover- 



ISO THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870, 

feeling, which at their best are sweetly lyrical, full of 
bright fancy, beautiful diction, and delicate observation 
of nature, resembling the verse of Keats and Tennyson. 
Her ballads and other verses for children, though often 
moral in intent, are playful. Her religious poems are 
at once devout and beautiful. Alice Cary*s poetical 
vein was slender, but it was pure gold. 

The continued literary sterility of the South is at first 
sight surprising. Intellect was not lacking — a glance at 
the history of the country is enough to prove that. Edu- 
cation and a certain sort of literary culture were not 
wanting among the upper class ; there were good private 
schools, and the eldest sons of the rich planters com- 
monly received a university education at the North or in 
England. Poetic passion and sense for beauty are native 
to the Southern blood and the Southern sky ; while the 
existence of a leisure class and of a picturesque social 
order directly favored literary productiveness. Tf this 
were the whole picture, it might naturally have been 
expected that the sunny South, settled by the song-loving 
Cavalier, would have become the cradle of x\merican art, 
the Italy of the New World. But it was not so. Great 
generals, wise statesmen, brilliant orators she has given 
us, but our most famous poets and romancers have nearly 
all been natives of the North. The explanation, after all, 
lies on the surface. Down to the time of the Civil War 
the Southern people, to use the words of a recent South- 
ern writer,^ "were living a primitive Hfe, a life full of 

nook, 1852-1853, two series of prose sketches; Hagar, 1852, a story; 
Pictures of Country Life, 1859; Ballads, Lyrics, atid Hytnus, 1866; A 
Lover s Diary, 1867, a poem ; etc. 

^ W. P. Trent, in his Ufe of W. G. Simms, p. 31. 



THE SOUTHERN SCHOOL. 151 

survivals." They were " descendants, in the main, of 
that ' portion of the Enghsh people who . . . had been 
least modernized, who still retained a large element of 
the feudal notions.' . . . Slavery helped feudalism, and 
feudalism Helped slavery ; and the Southern people were 
largely the outcome of the interaction of these two for- 
mative principles." Similarly, another Southern writer^ 
says : ^' The South changed far less after its separation 
from Great Britain than did the North. . . . Assuming 
provincialism to be ... * localism, or being on one side 
and apart from the general movement of contemporary 
life,' the South was provincial. . . . The world was 
moving with quicker strides than the Southern planter 
knew, and slavery was banishing from his land all the 
elements of that life which was keeping stride with prog- 
ress without." The literary life lagged behind with the 
rest. The Southern feudal aristocrat took naturally to 
hunting, horse-racing, law, and politics. Literature he 
looked upon ^^ as the choice recreation of gentlemen, as 
something fair and good, to be courted in a dainty, ama- 
teur fashion" ;^ but as for making a profession of it, the 
average Southern gentleman before the war would have 
endorsed the advice given to a promising Southern poet 
by one of his neighbors : '^ I wouldn't waste time on a 

thing like poetry ; you might make yourself, with 

all your sense and judgment, a useful man in settling 
neighborhood disputes and difficulties."^ The upper 
class was thus not of the temper to foster the growth of 

1 Thomas Nelson Page, in The Old South, pp. 24, 25. 

2 Paul H. Hayne, the Southern poet, as quoted in Trent's life of 
Simms, p. 25. 

3 The Old South, p, 71. The poet was Philip P. Cooke, who had 
iust become known as the author of that beautiful lyric, Florence Vane, 



152 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

a native literature, and there was no other that could do 
it. The Southern aristocrat's "power as a landed and 
slave proprietor drove out the small yeoman, cowed the 
tradesman and the mechanic, and deprived the South of 
that most necessary factor in the development of national 
greatness, a thrifty middle class.'' ^ The consequent lack 
of great centres of population, the fewness and poorness 
of the common schools, the absence of a large reading 
public — social phenomena all traceable ultimately to the 
South's inherited curses of feudal conservatism and Afri- 
can slavery — tended powerfully to prevent the develop- 
ment of a literary class by making it almost impossible 
for men of letters to gain a hearing or a living. 

But the literature of the Southern School, although 
scant in amount, is, at its best, of fine quality; and the 
writers have more in common than those of New York. 
The cavalier blood, the aristocratic structure of society, 
the semi-tropical climate, all tell in the literature, which 
has more local pride, more passion and color, more 
love of beauty for its own sake. William Crafts 
( 1 787-1 826), of South Carolina, a graduate of Harvard, 
a state legislator and eminent lawyer, had during his 
lifetime a reputation for brilliancy as orator, essayist, 
and poet; his Miscellaneous Writings (1828) do not 
bear it out, but he is an interesting figure as a literary 
pioneer. Richard H. Wilde (i 789-1847), a Georgia 
congressman and state attorney-general, is known chiefly 
by his song, My Life is Like the Su7nmer Rose ; but he 
was also a good Italian scholar; and his LLesperia 
(1867), a poem much in the manner of Childe ILarold, 
describes American scenes with a good deal of vigor 

1 W. P. Trent, in his life of Simms, p. 39. 



THE SOUTHERN WRITERS. 153 

and poetic glamour. The Poems (1825) of Edward C. 
PiNKNEY (1802-1828), of Maryland, contain some grace- 
ful lyrics in the manner of Moore; The Indian's Bride 
idealizes Indian life in the conventional way but rather 
prettily; Rodolph shows the influence of Scott and 
Byron. George H. Calvert (i 803-1 889), great-grand- 
son of the founder of Maryland, wrote much — too 
much — in verse of varied kinds but uniform quality. 
Philip P. Cooke (1816-1850), of Virginia, in Froissart 
Ballads and Other Poems (1847) shows much freshness 
and brightness; the ballads reproduce well the spirit 
of the old days of chivalry, and have something of 
Chaucer's na'ive blitheness; the nature poems are re- 
freshing by their breezy atmosphere and manly love of 
outdoor sports; his best-known poem, the Tennysonian 
lyric, Florence Vane, is delicate and sad. Orta-U^idis, 
and Other Poems (1848), by James M. Legare (1823- 
1859), of South Carolina, has French lightness of touch 
and grace of sentiment. The South Carolinian, Henry 
B. TiMROD (1829-1867), a poet of what Mr. Stedman 
calls "the artistic and cosmopolitan type," wrote pretty 
sonnets, and, in general, his Poems (i860) contains 
finished and delicate work. Of the same type were the 
poems, never collected, of John R. Thompson (1823- 
1873), a Virginian, for twelve years editor of The 
Southern Literary Messenger, Paul H. Hayne (1830- 
1886), of South Carolina, showed his artistic tempera- 
ment and warm Southern blood in his sensuous poems 
and sonorous odes; The Temptation of Venus (in Poems , 
1855) has passages of voluptuous beauty, and The Isla.nd 
in the South (in Avolio, ivith Poems , 1859) expresses a 
love for the natural, passionate life; later works are 



154 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

Legends and Lyrics (1872) and The Mountain of the 
Lovers (1875). John P. Kennedy (1795-1870), con- 
gressman from Maryland, and Secretary of the Navy in 
1852-1853, wrote novels that were once popular. Horse- 
Shoe Robinson (1835), his best work, a story of the 
Revolution, contains much exciting action, ending 
with the battle of King's Mountain; the picture of 
Marion's swamp-camp at night is graphic; but the 
original, shrewd character of "Horse-Shoe" and the 
narrative of his daring exploits are the best part of 
the book. 

William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870), of South Caro- 
lina, was a versatile and proHfic author,^ and, after Poe, 
the most considerable man of letters in the South. He 
experienced to the full the obstacles which Southern 

1 Lyrical and Other Poems, 1827. Early Lays, 1827. The Vision 
of Cortes, Cain, and Other Poems, 1829. Atalantis, 1832. Martin 
Faber, 1833. The Book of My Lady, 1833. Guy Rivers, 1834. 
The Yemassee, 1835. The Partisan, 1835. Mellichampe, 1836. Pe- 
layo, 1838. Richard Hurdis, 1838. Carl Werner, 1838. Southern 
Passages and Pictures, 1839. The Damsel of Darien, 1839. Border 
Beagles, 1840. The History of South Carohna, 1840. The Kins- 
men, 1841. Confession, 1841. Beauchampe, 1842. Donna Florida, 
1843. Castle Dismal, 1845. The Life of Francis Marion, 1845. 
Helen Halsey, 1845. Count Julian, 1845. Grouped Thoughts, a Col- 
lection of Sonnets, 1845. Views and Reviews, 1846 (imprint, 1845). 
The Wigwam and the Cabin, 1845-1846. Areytos ; or. Songs of the 
South, 1846. The Life of Captain John Smith, 1846. The Life of 
Chevalier Bayard, 1847. Lays of the Palmetto, 1848. Atalantis (con- 
taining also The Eye and the Wing), 1848. The Life of Nathaniel 
Greene, 1849. Father Abbot, 1849. Sabbath Lyrics, 1849. The Cas- 
sique of Accabee, with other Pieces, 1849. The City of the Silent, 1850. 
The Lily and the Totem, 1850. Norman Maurice, 1851. Katharine 
Walton, 1851. Michael Bonham (drama), 1852. The Sword and the 
Distaff, 1852. Marie de Berniere, 1853. Poems (2 vols.), 1853. Vas- 
conselos, 1854. The Forayers, 1855. Eutaw, 1856. Charlemont, 1856. 
The Cassique of Kiawah, 1859. Benedict Arnold, a Dramatic Essay, 
1863. Etc., etc. 



WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS. 155 

society at that time opposed to the Hterary life ; but his 
strong natural bent toward letters ^ and the resolution of 
his character (at maturity he had the look of a lion) 
triumphed- over all the difficulties which could be con- 
quered by individual effort. Belonging to the poorer 
class, he had scant and wretched school instruction. The 
Charleston library, however, was open to him ; and his 
grandmother, with whom he lived for many years, fired 
his boyish imagination with old tales of superstition and 
stories of the Revolution. When his father returned 
from several years' residence in the wilds of Mississippi, 
he increased the future romancer's stock in trade by 
thrilling descriptions of rough border life and of Indian 
warfare. Simms early began to write and publish ; meet- 
ing with some success, he boldly gave himself to liter- 
ature, pouring forth poems, novels, histories, and 
biographies with amazing rapidity, editing the Charleston 
Gazette, and struggling heroically at various times to 
keep several ill-starred magazines afloat. His poetry 
displays much talent and facility. The earlier vol- 
umes, consisting mostly of poems on love, nature, 
and Indian life, and imitative of Byron and Moore, 
are inferior. Atalantis, an ambitious poem of fancy, 
in dramatic form, the main elements apparently sug- 
gested by The Tempest, Comus, and Prometheus Un- 
bound, is written in light blank verse, and some of the 
songs are pretty. Donna Florida, an avowed attempt 
to imitate the wit of Don Juan without its indecency, 
amusingly pictures the aged Ponce de Leon's courtship 

1 To hide the light from his vigilant grandmother, who did not ap- 
prove of late hours, the boy would read in his room with candle and 
bead inside a box. 



156 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

of a saucy young beauty;^ the description of the fight 
with the Florida Indians is spirited. Songs a7id Ballads 
have music, warmth, local color, and love for the "sunny 
South." The Cassique of Ac cab ee is an interesting and 
pathetic tale of an Indian chief's love for a white girl. 
Norman Maurice is a bold attempt to write a tragedy on 
a subject from contemporary American life. The scene 
is Philadelphia and Missouri; Maurice, a young lawyer 
and senator-elect, is in danger of ruin by the plots of 
his enemy; his wife stabs the plotter, to get the seem- 
ingly incriminating papers, and is killed by the shock 
to her moral nature. The style is rather oratorical, and 
the general effect crude. Much of Simms's best poetry is 
in the collection of 1853; the tales make interesting and 
poetic use of local traditions and scenery; The Shaded 
Water is a quietly beautiful nature poem; Summer in 
the South has flush; in Bertram and The Death of Cleo- 
patra^ which were perhaps influenced by Landor's 
Imaginary Conversations^ are excellent style and some 
true dramatic feeling; several versified Bible stories 
reflect, like Willis's languidly pious wares, the taste of 
the times. Simms's poetry, as a whole, lacks concentra- 
tion and perfection of form. His novels have been more 
widely read, but they also bear marks of haste. His 
models were Scott and Cooper, and occasionally Godwin 

1 Leonora's song to her tedious wooer is tricksy : — 
Old men young maids pursuing, 

How little do they guess, 
That every hour of wooing, 

But makes their chances less. . , . 
Love hath no long discourses, 

A single smile, a sigh, 
These are the sovereign forces, 

That give him victory. 

— Canto II., after stanza 35. 



JOHN ESTEN COOKE. 157 

and Brown;' but the subject-matter was fresh. In the 
so-called "border romances," the crudest of his stories, 
rough life in the Southwestern states is described with 
much vigor-and rush. His best novels, as The Partisan^ 
The Kinsmen, and Katharine Walton, handle themes 
from Southern history in the stirring times of the 
Revolution; and the pictures of Southern life and so- 
ciety, and the narratives of historical or semi-historical 
events, are still interesting. Like Cooper, however, 
Simms often loiters by the way to talk when he should 
be in the saddle; his humor is sometimes tedious; his 
love scenes are comparatively insipid; and his heroes 
and heroines are, in general, less individual and inter- 
esting than the characters from common life, although he 
succeeds in giving rather vivid impressions of the beauty 
and spirit of high-bred Southern women. But in scenes 
of action, as in the attack upon the Middleton man- 
sion in The Kinsmen, the narrative is often rapid 
and powerful, holding the attention and stirring the 
blood. Simms had talent and industry enough. What 
he needed, in order to reach that slightly higher level 
which ensures permanence of fame, was brilliancy, a 
severer standard of workmanship, and a more favorable 
literary environment.^ 

John Esten Cooke (i 830-1 886), of Virginia, wrote 
several novels ^ of much the same general character as 

1 In the years 1835-1846 seven of the novels were reprinted in Eng- 
land ; and The Wigwam and Cabin^ a collection of tales, was translated 
into German in 1846. 

2 Leather Stocking and Silk, a Story of the Valley of Virginia, 1854. 
The Virginia Comedians; or. Days in the Old Dominion, 1854. Henry 
St. John, Gentleman, a Tale of 1774-1775, 1859. Surrey of Eagle's 
Nest, 1866. Fairfax, 1868. Hilt to Hilt, 1869. Hammer and Rapier, 
1870. The Virginia Bohernians, 1880. My Lady Pokahontas, 1885. 



158 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

those by Simms. His analysis of character was much 
keener and deeper, however, and his gift of humor 
greater, and there is more passion and poetry in his 
style. He reminds one of Thackeray, at times, by his 
easy familiarity with good society and by a suggestion 
of reserve power. The Virginia Comedians, perhaps his 
best novel, gives vivid and brilliantly colored pictures 
of life in the Old Dominion in 1763 and 1765; but 
the attempt to introduce Patrick Henry is a flat failure, 
leading to nothing but tiresome political conversations 
and sophomoric declamation. 

The life of Edgar Allan Poe ^ is the saddest in 

1 Life. Born in Boston, Jan. 19, 1809. Father an actor ; mother an 
English actress. After his mother's death in 1811, adopted by John Allan 
of Richmond ; 1815-1820, at Manor House School, near London ; 1820- 
1825, at school in Richmond ; Feb. 14, 1826, matriculated in University of 
Virginia ; because of gambling debts, withdrawn in December and placed 
in his guardian's counting-room. Wandered to Boston ; served in the 
army, 1827-1829; admitted to West Point, July i, 1830; Mar. 6, 1831, 
discharged. In Baltimore, writing for magazines, 1831-1835. In Rich- 
mond, editor of The Southern Literary Messenger, 1835-1837 ; probably 
married secretly to his cousin, Virginia Clemm, thirteen years old, at 
Baltimore, 1835 ; publicly married, 1836. In New York, writing, 1837- 
1838. In Philadelphia, 1838-1844: associate editor of Burtons Gentle- 
man's Magazine, 1839-1840 ; editor of Grahams Magazine, 1841-1842. 
In New York, 1844-1849 (living at Fordham, in the environs, after 
1845): " paragraphist " for The Evening Mirror ^ i.'^d^j^-\'^a^<^', co-editor, 
editor, and owner of The Broadway Journal, 1845 ; wife died, Jan. 30, 
1847; conditionally accepted by Mrs. Sarah Whitman, November, 
1848 ; rejected for intemperance, December, 1848. To Richmond, 
July, 1849 ; apparently engaged to Mrs. Sarah Skelton in September ; 
died in Baltimore, Oct. 7, 1849. 

Works. Tamerlane and Other Poems, 1827. Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, 
and Minor Poems, 1829. Poems, 1831. The Narrative of Arthur 
Gordon Pym, 1838. Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, 1840. 
Tales, 1845. The Raven, in the New York Evening Mirror, Jan. 29, 
1845. The Raven and Other Poems, 1845. Eureka: a Prose Poem, 
1848. Annabel Lee, in The New York Tribune soon after Poe's death. 
The Bells, in Sartains Magazine, November, 1849. On Critics and 
Criticism, in Graham's Magazine, January, 185O0 The Poetic Principle, 



EDGAR ALLAN POE. 159 

the annals of American men of letters. His father 
seems to have been rather a worthless fellow; but his 
grandfather, General David Poe of Baltimore, was a 
man of high- character. From his mother, an actress of 
some ability and the daughter of a talented actress, Poe 
inherited his artistic temperament. The beautiful, pre- 
cocious boy soon became a pet in the home of his fos- 
ter parents, the Allans, where he was surrounded by 
luxury and by the best Virginian society. His five 
years' residence in England, in the midst of old build- 
ings and memories of departed greatness, doubtless did 
yet more to develop his dreamy love of beauty. Yet in 
some respects his early training was peculiarly unfortu- 
nate. Imperious, wilful, proud, and shy, he needed 
firm discipline and love; he got indulgence and mere 
kindness. At school he was a swift runner and bold 
swimmer, a brilliant though inaccurate scholar; but he 
was not thoroughly liked, and in boyhood, as in man- 
hood, stood aloof in proud loneliness. At the Univer- 
sity of Virginia there is no evidence that he drank or 
gambled more than was common among young Virginian 
bloods in those days; at all events, he came home at the 
end of the term with first honors in Latin and French. 
But his foster-father, over-indulgent to the boy, went to 
the other extreme with the young man. Poe of course 
rebelled, and wandered off to shift for himself. Find- 
ing that one could not live by the sale of poetry, even in 
Boston, he enlisted as a private in the army. A partial 
reconciliation with Mr. Allan resulted in his release and 
Ais admission to West Point Military Academy. His 

in SartairCs Magazine, October, 1850. Most of Foe's criticisms, tales, 
and poems appeared first in periodicals. 



j6o the literature FROM 1815 to 1870. 

scholarship there was high, and his discharge was due 
merely to neglect of the distasteful military routine. 

Poe's life was henceforth a struggle with poverty. 
In 1833 he had sunk to great destitution, when, by his 
MS, Found in a Bottle^ he won a prize of one hundred 
dollars offered by the Baltimore Saturday Visiter ; later 
he found some hack-work to do, and sold a few stories. 
It was during this period of obscurity and want in Bal- 
timore, while he was residing with his father's sister, 
Mrs. Clemm, and her daughter Virginia, that there came 
into his life that love which almost to the end of his 
days burned bright and beautiful there amid the sur- 
rounding gloom. Unfortunately, at this time also he 
became a slave to drugs and liquor. At Richmond, 
whither he removed as editor of The Southern Literary 
Messenger, all went well for a while. Under his conduct 
the magazine sprang into sudden prominence; and his 
salary, at first only ten dollars a week, was raised to 
eight hundred dollars a year, with a prospect of further 
-increase. But the unfortunate man carried within him- 
self his own ruin. At times he would drink till his 
senses were lost; and his employer, who was also his 
true friend, at last had to let him go. In Philadelphia 
and New York it was the same story over again, year 
after year : he easily got situations, but soon lost or re- 
signed them. At irregular intervals he was made incapa- 
ble of work by indulgence in alcohol and opium; he was 
constitutionally restless, irritable, imperious, and hard 
to get along with, yet was pitiably weak, sometimes im- 
ploring his friends to save him from himself; he was 
not always truthful; he quarrelled easily with old friends, 
and thereupon seemed to feel released from all sense of 



EDGAR ALLAN POE. i6l 

gratitude for past benefactions.^ But he also had many 
fine qualities. In his ordinary deportment he was very 
quiet and gentlemanly,^ and he was capable of rare lov- 
ableness and -charm. His home life in the tiny rose- 
covered cottage on the outskirts of Philadelphia, and in 
the retreat at Fordham, with its surrounding cherry 
trees and glimpse of the distant sea, was almost idyllic 
in the happier days, when the childlike wife sang to the 
harp in a voice of wonderful sweetness, the melancholy 
poet hanging over her fragile form as if he momently 
feared to lose her, while the good Mrs. Clemm looked 
on with motherly love for both. Occasionally, in New 
York, he went to literary receptions, where, '* dressed in 
plain black, but with the head, the broad, retreating 
white brow, the large, luminous, piercing eyes, the im- 
passive lips, that gave the visible character of genius 
to his features," he would, "in his ordinary, subdued, 
musical tones, exercise the fascination of his talk.*'^ 
He had "a peculiar and irresistible charm " for women, 
whom he addressed with a " chivalric, graceful, almost 

1 Foe's first biographer, Grisvvold, perhaps painted the picture blacker 
than it was ; but the amiable Ingram liberally applied whitewash. The 
evidence for the above view of the poet's character may be found in 
Woodberry's hfe of Foe, in the biographical sketch in Stedman and 
Woodberry's edition of Foe, and in Foe's letters (with Professor Wood- 
berry's comments) in The Century Magazine^ August, September, Octo- 
ber, 1894. 

2 " He impressed me as a refined and very gentlemanly man, exceed- 
ingly neat in his person. . . . His manner was quiet and reserved; he 
rarely smiled. . . . The form of his manuscript was peculiar ; he wrote 
on half-sheets of note-paper, which he pasted together at the ends, 
making one continuous piece. As he read he dropped it upon the 
floor. It was very neatly written, and without corrections, apparently." 
— Letter by Mr. Darley, with whom Foe had pleasant relations ; in 
Woodberry, p. 181. 

3 Professor Woodberry, in his life of Foe, p. 258. 

M 



i62 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

tender reverence/*^ But at times the destitution of the 
poet and his family was pitiful.^ During Virginia's 
last illness, a visitor found her lying on a straw bed, 
"wrapped in her husband's great-coat, with a large tor- 
toise-shell cat in her bosom; . . . the coat and the 
cat were the sufferer's only means of warmth, except as 
her husband held her hands, and her mother her feet."^ 
It is some alleviation to know that aid was promptly 
rendered, and that the last weeks of the uncomplaining 
little wife were made as comfortable as they could be. 
After her death, Poe had brain fever; friends raised 
money for his support. He recovered after a while, and 
did some writing and lecturing. But he was a good 
deal broken, and often half insane. He felt pitifully 
the need of help, now that Virginia was gone, and sought 
it in Platonic friendship with "Annie" and in the love 
of Mrs. Whitman, a poetess. His final "descent into 
the maelstrom " was swift and fearful. In the summer 
of 1849, on his way to Richmond, — whither he went 
hoping to realize his long-cherished plan of starting a 
magazine of his own, — he had a severe attack of de- 
lirium tremens, in Philadelphia. At Richmond he was 
twice seriously ill from intemperance. Yet he spent 
several happy weeks among old friends; and when he 

1 Mrs. Francis S. Osgood, as quoted in Woodberry, p. 263. 

2 In a charming, chatty letter to Mrs. Clemm, written just after he 
and Virginia had removed to New York, he says, " We have now got 
four dollars and a half left. To-morrow I am going to try and borrow 
three dollars, so that I may have a fortnight to go upon. I feel in ex- 
cellent spirits, and haven't drank a drop — so that I hope soon to get 
out of trouble. , . . You can't imagine how much we both do miss 
you. Sissy [Virginia] bad a hearty cry last night because you and 
Catterina [the cat] weren't here." — Woodberry, p. 204. 

3 Woodberry, p. 274, 



EDGAR ALLAN POE. 163 

went North, in the fall, it was for the purpose of bring- 
ing Mrs. Clemm back to Richmond, where he hoped 
soon to marry a rich widow, who had been his love 
in youth. Just what happened to him in Baltimore, 
where he stopped on the way, is uncertain. But he 
was rescued from a rumshop by an old friend, and 
taken, unconscious, to the city hospital, where, four 
days later, he died in extreme misery. 

In Poe the artist, were two men — a man of analytic 
intellect and a man of poetic imagination. This fact will 
furnish the point of view in our rapid survey of his writings. 

Poe's criticisms of contemporary authors are of Httle 
interest now, dealing mostly with forgotten nobodies 
and the details of technique.^ But The Rationale of 
Verse, coming from so great an artist, is valuable ; and 
the lecture on The Poetic Principle, in which poetry is 
defined as "the rhythmic creation of beauty," was a 
wholesome antidote to the prevailing didacticism in 
New England conceptions of art.^ His most ambitious 
intellectual flight was Eureka, an essay on the mate- 
rial and spiritual universe, which is ingenious and 



1 In their day they did some service to American letters by their 
keen and fearless attacks upon complacent mediocrity. Poe's severity 
is, however, commonly exaggerated. He often praised too highly ; and 
he was quick to recognize real merit, assigning a high place to Bryant 
and the newcomers Longfellow and Lowell — in spite of his persistent 
charges of plagiarism against Longfellow, culminating in the " Long- 
fellow war" in 1845, and his bitter review of A Fable for Critics, after 
Lowell had drawn off from him. 

2 Poe's analytic power was manifested more fully by his demonstra- 
tion that Maelzel's automatic chess-player was operated by a concealed 
man ; by his deciphering all the cryptograms sent to The Southern 
Literary Messenger in response to his challenge; and by his famous 
anticipation of the plot of Barnahy Rudge after a few chapters had 
appeared. 



i64 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

brilliant, but unsubstantial, fallacious, and sometimes 
ignorant.^ 

In the Tales of Ratiocination — The Murders in the 
Rue Mo7'gue, The Mystery of Marie Roget, The Pur- 
loined Letter^ The Gold Bug, etc. — analytic reason is 
so brilliantly employed that Poe has been called the 
"potential prince of detectives." In the Tales of 
Pseudo-Science, also, intellect predominates. The Ad- 
venture of One Hans Pfaal and The Balloon Hoax are 
worked out with great realistic detail and display of 
science, but they do not allow of the higher imagination. 
A Descent into the Maelstro7n is more poetical, and the 
scientific part blends perfectly with the poetic; we read 
eagerly about the law governing the velocity of bodies 
in water, because on it hangs the safety of a human life, 
and to the sigh of relief when the awful vortex is cheated 
of its prey there is added the pleasure of pride in the 
conquering intellect of puny man. The latter part of 
Arthur Gordon Pym, Poe's one long tale, with its pic- 
tures of the milky Antarctic Ocean and the gigantic mist- 
curtain " ranged along the whole extent of the southern 
horizon,'* is poetically imaginative. The Facts in the 
Case of M, Valdemar, however, is chiefly intellectual, 
and ends with a profitless and fearfully repulsive descrip- 
tion of the physical corruption of death ; while Mesmeric 
Revelation contains some of the ideas about matter and 
spirit which were afterward elaborated in Eureka. 
Tales of Adventure and Horror — MS. Foimd in a 
Bottle, The Pit and the Penduhwi, the larger part of 

1 See Woodberry, pp. 285-301. Poe had a smattering of many 
subjects, and great cleverness in making a show of learning ; see Wood- 
berry, pp. 51, 96, 105, etc. 



EDGAR ALLAN FOE. 165 

Arthur Gordon Fy7?i, etc. — have relatively more of the 
imaginative and supernatural and less of the intellectual. 
In Tales of Conscience — WiUiani Wilson, The Black 
Cat, The Tell- Tale Heart, etc. — narrative is subor- 
dinate, tefror is supreme, and it is the terror of 
conscience. But the moral aspect of conscience is 
practically nothing, the imaginative and psychological 
almost everything; the conscience itself, by poetic 
symbolism, is represented by something external — 
Wilson's double, the dead man's beating heart, the 
black cat with its one flaming red eye, — and at the 
climax the interest is not in the sin but in the imagi- 
native situation, the madness, the horror. The theme 
of deepest and most permanent fascination for Poe was 
death; and in the Romances of Death he approached 
it from many points of view and in many moods. The 
Assignation surrounds death with all the luxury of Old 
World wealth and beauty, and with the glamour of intel- 
lect, genius, and proud, calm will. The Masque of the 
Red Death is a magnificent symphony of color and 
grouping, whose theme is death triumphant over arrogant 
and selfish greatness. Eleanora is a melody of ideal 
love, which not even ugly death can wholly rob of its 
ineffable beauty. The Fall of the House of Usher is a 
prose poem of imaginative fear connected with death 
and plunging at last into black depths of madness and 
annihilation.^ In Ligeia, splendidly terrible, hung 
round like the bridal chamber with rich, fantastic tap- 



1 In this tale Poe's art of symbolizing the inner by the outer, fusing 
the two into a wonderful harmony without violating the individuality of 
either, reaches perfection ; as does also his genius for unifying details, 
often the merest touches, into one central effect of piercing intensity. 



i66 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

estries of golden gloom, death is temporarily conquered 
on earth by the agonizing might of a divine woman's 
will.^ In Monos and Una and Eiron and Charmion the 
eternal victory of the soul, rising into pure celestial re- 
gions above the wreck of matter, is portrayed with ethe- 
reality if with less of spectacular splendor. The 
Sketches of Natural Beauty — The Island of the Fay, 
Lander's Cottage, The Domain of Arnheim — are almost 
pure poetry in their calm loveliness. The last-named 
reveals, in unequalled degree, Poe's oriental riot in the 
prodigal massing of all that might ravish the senses with 
voluptuous pleasure, yet convey to the soul, through the 
subtle channels of the imagination, a delight still more 
entrancing.^ 

Poe's poetry has much in common with his prose. 
Even his analytic and synthetic intellect appears 
in a few poems by its results, — preeminently in 
The- Raven, which has more of clever mechanism and 
less of the finer spirit of poetry than several of the less 
popular poems; ^ The Bells is yet more mechanical, 
although a very skilful example of onomatopoeia of the 
obvious kind. The gloomy hero, devoted to recondite 

1 Berenice was a fore-study for the House of Usher ; Morella, for 
Ligeia. 

2 In the above survey, the classification in Stedman and Woodberry's 
edition of Poe has been followed, but with some material modifications. 
The tales there included under " Extravaganza and Caprice," where 
come most of Poe's awkward attempts at humor, are too inferior for 
consideration here. 

3 Poe's account, in The Philosophy of Composition, of the manufacture 
of the poem is doubtless more than half fiction (see Stedman and 
Woodberry's edition of Poe, Vol. X., for other reports of the mode of 
its composition) ; but however spontaneous the main conception may 
have been, the elaboration of it bears as evident marks of intellectual 
design as the most cleverly contrived of the tales. 



EDGAR ALLAN POE. 167 

studies and a prey to melancholy, is a familiar figure in 
both the prose and the verse. And death, with its sorrow 
and gloom, is the favorite theme of the poet as of the 
romancer. The two distinctive characteristics of Poe's 
poetry are its mysticism and its music. Poe believed 
that, far above this low world, is Eternal Beauty; 
that through art we get "brief and indeterminate 
glimpses'' of the "Supernal Loveliness";^ that music 
is the most effective means of producing that " elevating 
excitement of the soul " ^ which yields these mystical 
glimpses into a higher world; and, consequently, that 
"the vagueness of exaltation aroused by a sweet air 
(which should be strictly indefinite and never too 
strongly suggestive) is precisely what we should aim at 
in poetry."^ This conception of a supernal world of 
perfect and eternal beauty is the main inspiration of 
Israfel and Dreamland ; flickers vaguely through Al 
Aaraaf, which it feebly rescues from absolute inanity 
and sensuous chaos; and underlies many other of the 
poems. The purpose rather to produce moods, to exalt 
the soul by beauty, than to convey ideas, led Poe to 
cultivate the purely musical side of verse and to employ 
much symbolism, sometimes very vague. This tendency 
reached its extreme in Ulalmne^ isolated lines of which 
are undeniably ludicrous; but the poem as a whole 
does express with weird power a weird mood, in which 
the soul, numb with grief, enveloped in a haze of vaguely 
sad forgetfulness, floats on with the aimless, mazy, 
backward-revolving movement of a troubled dream, until 
it suddenly awakes to acute anguish in some "ghoul- 

1 The Poetic Principle. 

2 Letter to Lowell, in Woodberry, p. 213. 



i68 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

haunted woodland.'* The desire to produce the brood- 
ing effect of dreamy moods was doubtless the reason why 
Poe used the refrain, the repetend, and the parenthetical 
phrase so freely; and whatever may be thought of the 
result in Ulalume, elsewhere his success is beyond cavil. 
Symbolism is also used superbly in The Conqueror Worfn 
and The Haunted Palace, — the one more stark and sar- 
donic and having a larger stage, but the other more piti- 
ful and intensely terrible, unequalled in verse as a 
picture of the ruin of a soul by madness. In The 
Haunted Palace also occur snatches of that magical 
melody to which Poe, alone of American poets, has ever 
attained ; — 

Banners yellow, glorious, golden, 

On its roof did float and flow, 
(This — all this — was in the olden 

Time long ago) ; 
And every gentle air that dallied, 

In that sweet day, 
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, 

A winged odor went away.^ 

Poe has been accused of plagiarism; but in his best 
work he was emphatically original, — no man more so. 
In fact, the difficulty is to find sufficient antecedents for 
him. In poetry he was clearly influenced by Byron, 
Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats; yet, except in a few 

1 In The City in the Sea are a few lines perhaps even more full of 
witchery; and the very soul of Israfel is embodied in its versification, 

which has in places the upspringing lightness of a bird. In the 

above attempt to point out the inter-relations of the criticisms, tales, 
and poems, no regard has been had to chronological sequence; but in 
a general way the tendency was from poetry to intellect, the year 1840 
being approximately the water-shed. 



EDGAR ALLAN POE. 169 

juvenilia, his music and style are as individual as theirs.^ 
His tales show some indebtedness, in subjects and gen- 
eral method, to Charles Brockden Brown, the English 
school of terror and mystery, and the German senti- 
mentalists and romancers.'^ In the arts of unity, con- 
densation, and clearness, he was evidently helped by 
his intimate knowledge of French literature.^ And his 
style, in addition to Gallic finish and celerity, has, when 
occasion calls, a sweet melancholy, an elaborate ornate- 
ness, an impassioned and complex harmony, which 
remind one of The English Mail- Coach and Our Ladies 
of Sorrow. To his American environment, Poe cer- 
tainly owed nothing but poverty and fetters. But, in 
spite of all, he managed to produce a few poems and 
tales which are perfect of their kind and greatly 
raised the standard of art in American literature. 
There is no need to dwell upon the obvious limitations 
of his work — its lack of mental breadth, of moral and 
spiritual significance, of wholesome humanity. Poe was 



1 Oi Annabel Lee Mr. Stedman says, " The refrain and measure . . . 
suggest a reversion, in the music-haunted brain of its author, to the 
songs and melodies that are . . . favorites of the colored race." — Intro- 
duction to the Poems, in Stedman and Woodberry's edition of Poe, 
Vol. X. The germ of the metrical movement of Ulalume may perhaps 
be felt in the song which closes Scene 4, Act II., of Prometheus Un- 
bound. Lady Geraldines Courtship, by Mrs. Browning (whom Poe 
greatly admired) , apparently suggested the metre of The Raven, and a 
phrase or two in it besides. 

2 Stedman has pointed out certain striking resemblances between 
Poe's work and that of Ernst Hoffmann (1776-1822) ; see his Intro- 
duction to the Tales in Stedman and Woodberry's edition of Poe, 
Vol. I. 

3 During Poe's lifetime, the French mind began to recognize the 
affinity between his genius and its own. Baudelaire translated his tales 
with remarkable imaginative sympathy ; and they have been widely read, 
especially in France and Spain. 



170 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

no sun shedding its genial beams broadcast over the 
earth; but he was at least an arc-light shining brilliantly, 
and picturesquely heightening the shadows, in the Place 
of Tombs^ 

In spite of some limitations as compared with the 
Southern and the Middle States, New England on the 
whole maintained her intellectual and literary preemi- 
nence, Massachusetts in particular being prolific of 
poets, essayists, and writers of novels. Of the minor 
authors many were deservedly popular in their day; but 
a bird's-eye view of them is all that is possible here. 
Richard H. Dana (1787-1879), a Boston lawyer and 
politician, associate editor of The North Ajnerican 
Review in 18 18-1820, wrote better prose than verse. 
The Buccaneer (1827) is based on a finely poetical 
sea-superstition, but is awkwardly told; all his poems 
seem manufactured, and most are dull. His reviews 
of Brown, Irving, and others, in The North American, 
are sensible, and the style is clear and strong. The 
tales, Tofu Thornton and Paul Felton (in his periodical, 
The Idle Man, 1821-1822), have considerable power, 
although the didacticism of the first is too obvious and 
the second is a rather violent imitation of Brown. The 
hymns of John Pierpont (i 785-1866), a Boston Uni- 
tarian clergyman and ardent abolitionist, have merit, 
and his Anti- Slavery Poems (1843) ^^^ ^^t and strong. 
Charles Sprague (i 791-1825), a Boston bank cashier, 
was a facile "occasional" poet, winning several prizes 
for prologues and sounding odes; one passage from his 
flowery oration on American Independence (1825), re- 
ferring to the time when '^the rank thistle nodded in the 



MINOR AUTHORS. 171 

wind," still. lingers in the memories of grown-up school- 
boys. A man of more native literary gift was James 
A. HiLLHOUSE ( 1 789-1841), a retired Connecticut 
merchant, whose Df-ainas, Discourses, and Other Pieces 
(1839) exhibit taste and skill; De77iet7ia in particular, 
a tragedy of love, jealousy, poison, and death in old 
Florence, although the characterization is weak has 
easy blank verse and finish and purity of style, with now 
and then a striking phrase. Lydia H. Sigourney (1791- 
1865), long resident in Hartford, by her all too numer- 
ous moral and sentimental works in verse and prose 
{Moral Pieces, 1815; Letters to Young Ladies, 1833; 
The Weeping Willow, 1847; Lays of the Heart, 1848; 
Whisper to a BiHde, 1850; etc.) obtained the coveted 
title of *^the American Mrs. Hemans"; she is still use- 
ful as an index to the taste of the times, which left its 
impress upon greater writers as well, and helps to explain 
some of their artistic shortcomings. John Neal (1793- 
1876), a native of Maine, whose The Battle of Niagara 
was mentioned on an earlier page, threw himself, with 
like impetuosity and buoyant egotism, into journalism, 
literary criticism, the composition of dramas, and novel- 
writing; his novels {Keep Cool, 181 7; Seventy-Six, 
1823; Brother Jofiathan, 1825; etc.) met with some 
success, but, like all his work, lack finish and repose, 
and have passed away. The works of three female 
novelists have pretty much shared the same fate. Maria 
G. Brooks (i 795-1 845), wife of a Boston merchant, in 
her semi-autobiographical tale, Ldomen, or the Vale of 
Yumuri (1843), was the first American to describe suc- 
cessfully the climate of Cuba and the sensuous luxury 
of Cuban life. Her poems — Judith, Esther, afid Other 



172 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

Poems (1820) and Zophiel, or the Bride of Seven (1833), 
the latter on the model of Moore and Southey — show 
the same love of sensuous beauty.^ Catharine M. 
Sedgwick (i 789-1867), for half a century principal of a 
young ladies' school at Stockbridge, Mass., wrote many 
novels, naturally of a paler hue, including A New Eng- 
land Tale (1822), Redwood (1824), Hope Leslie^ or 
Early Times in the Massachusetts (1827), The Linwoods, 
or Sixty Years Since in America'^ (1835), Married or 
Single? (1857), and many others. The novels of Lydia 
M. Child (i 802-1 880), of Massachusetts, which are 
also deficient in brilliancy and power, show the same 
trend toward subjects from American history; she was 
precocious, Hobomok: a Tale of Early Times, appearing 
in 182 1, and The Rebels (describing the sacking of Gov- 
ernor Hutchinson's house by a mob, and the Boston 
Massacre) in 1822. William Ware (1797-1852), a Mas- 
sachusetts clergyman, was a prolific writer, but is best 
known by his historical romances, Zenobia, or the Fall 
of Palmyra (1838) and Aurelian, or Ro?ne in the Third 
Century (1848), in the form of letters by a Roman 
noble. James G. Percival (1795-1856), of Connecticut, 
had remarkable versatility, being surgeon in the army, 
professor of chemistry at West Point, geologist, reviser 
of Webster's Dictionary (he was acquainted with San- 
skrit, Basque, Gallic, Norse, Danish, Swedish, and 
Russian), and poet. Prometheus (1820) has the Byronic 
gloom, but in Clio (182 2-1 82 7) and The Poetical Works 
(1859) Shelley is the prevailing influence. Percival's 

1 Southey, whom she met in 1831, admired her poetry and gave her 
the name of " Maria del Occidente." 

2 Unfortunately its likeness to Waverley is only title-deep. 



MINOR AUTHORS 173 

poetry is often brilliant with delicate color and suffused 
with ideal beauty; but it is wanting in concentration 
and unity of effect, and, like so much good verse that 
has failed to live, reminds one of Browning's lines: — 

Oh, the little more, and how much it is ! 
And the little less, and what worlds away ! 

John G. C. Brainard (i 796-1828), another Connecti- 
cut poet, wrote of American scenery, history, and 
superstitions with considerable poetic feeling and some 
skill in expression. Albert G. Greene (1802-1868), 
a Providence lawyer, still lives in the death of "Old 
Grimes."^ Emma H. Willard (1787-1870), who wrote 
Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep ; Samuel F. Smith 
(1808-1895), author of America (1832); Sarah H. 
Whitman (1803-1878), Poe's friend and defender, and 
a graceful versifier; George Lunt (i 803-1 885), who 
wrote light lyrics and pleasant nature poems; Frances 
S. Osgood (1811-1850), another of Poe's friends and a 
poetess of the prettily sentimental type; Albert Pike 
(1809-1891), whose once well-known Hy?nns to the Gods 
(1829, 1830, 1845) have much rhetorical ability; Epes 
Sargent (1813-1880), author of several novels and 
plays, but remembered now only by A Life on the Ocean 
Wave (in Songs of the Sea, 1847); and Longfellow's 
brother — Samuel Longfellow (18 19-189 2), — a Unita- 
rian clergyman, whose hymns and other religious poems 
are of singular purity and calm — can all receive but this 
passing glance. Sylvester Judd (18 13-1853), a Unita- 

1 It would be inexcusable not to record gratefully, in passing, that 
Mr. Greene was the beginner of the Harris collection of American 
Poetry, which has been simply invaluable in the preparation of this book. 



174 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

rian clergyman, faithfully described New England life 
and scenery in his novels, Margaret (1845) and Richard 
Edney (1850); he also wrote Philo (1850), a Unitarian 
epic. Richard H. Dana, Jr. (1815-1882), a Massa- 
chusetts lawyer, was the author of the famous Two 
Years before the Mast (1840), a book having the reality 
of personal experience and the interest of a romance. 
The continued popularity of Reveries of a Bachelor 
(1850) and Dream Life (185 1), by Donaij)^G. Mitchell 
(1822- ), or "Ik Marvel," shows that some portion 
of Irving's spirit has descended upon him. Henry H. 
Brownell, U. S. N. (1820-1872), of Rhode Island and 
Connecticut, wrote War Ly7'ics and Other Poems (1866), 
including one of the best poems occasioned by the Civil 
War, The Bay Fight, a stirring and powerful description 
of the battle of Mobile Bay. Another war lyric. Battle 
Bym7i of the Reptcblic (1862), by Julia Ward Ho^ 
(1819- ) has superb swing and exalted religious 
passion ; her other poems are commonplace. The most 
famous book occasioned by the conditions out of which 
the Civil War arose is Uncle Toni's Cabin (1851-1852),^ 
by Harriet Beecher Stowe (181 2-1896), a native of 
Connecticut. The novel has grave literary blemishes, 
and as an interpretation of Southern life is very faulty. 
Nevertheless it has certain elements of greatness. It 
would be superfluous to praise the moral intensity, 
pathos, descriptive genius, and dramatic power of a 
book that stirred North and South to the depths; 



1 It appeared first as a serial in the Washington National Era, June, 
1851, to April, 1852. In five years half a million copies had been sold 
in the United States, and the sale in England was enormous. The book 
has been translated into several foreign languages. 



MINOR AUTHORS, 175 

dramatized, was acted night after night before delighted 
audiences who would have mobbed an abolitionist ora- 
tor; set far-away Paris to weeping; and, after half a 
century, when the political issues that gave rise to it 
have become obsolete, still finds many readers of ma- 
ture years and holds countless boys and girls from play. 
Mrs. Stowe's numerous other books are practically for- 
gotten. The high promise of the novels Cecil Dreeme 
(1861) sxiAJohn Brent (1862), by Theodore Winthrop 
( 1 828-1861), a descendant of Governor Winthrop, made 
doubly sad the author's untimely death in battle. As 
a critic and lecturer Edwin P. Whipple (181 9-1886), 
long resident in Boston, was conspicuous for many 
years, and his best essays are still read by the student 
of literature for their keen analysis and fine literary 
sense; but he was not a great critic, and his books 
lack that charm of manner and richness of thought 
which make Lowell's and Arnold's critical essays litera- 
ture.-^ The sculptor William W. Story (18 19-1895), son 
of Chief Justice Story, and a native of Salem, who for- 
sook law for art and took up his residence in Italy in 
1848, was a poet of fine culture and a delightful writer on 
art and letters.^ The influence of Tennyson prevailed 
in the manner of his earlier verses, which are mostly 

1 His principal writings are Essays and Reviews, 1848 ; Literature and 
Life, 1849 ; Character and Characteristic Men, 1866 ; Literature of the 
Age of Elizabeth, 1869 ; Success and its Conditions, 1871 ; Recollections 
of Eminent Men, 1886; American Literature and Other Papers, 1887; 
Outlooks on Society, Literature, and Politics, 1888. 

^ His principal writings 2,1^ Nature and Art (poem), 1844; Poems, 
1847, 1856, 1886 ; Roba di Roma, or Walks and Talks about Rome, 1862 ; 
Graffiti d'' Italia (poems) , 1868 ; A Roman Lawyer in Jerusalem : First 
Century, 1870 ; Nero, 1875 I Castle of St. Angelo, 1877 ; He and She : or a 
Poet's Portfolio, i.^^-^; Fiammeta: a Su?nmer Idyl,-i^2)^', Conversations 
in a Studio, 1890; Excursions in Art and Letters, 1891. 



176 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

lyrics, daintily choice in diction and imagery, while 
Browning is his model in the rest. Mr. Story excels in 
expressing intangible, dreamy, misty moods, and in 
handling motives derived from art. Pan in Love, 
Praxiteles and Phryne, and Cleopatra are three of his 
best poems, — the last a superb interpretation of the 
Egyptian voluptuary's tiger soul, leopard-like, too, in 
splendid, lazy luxuriousness. Thomas W. Parsons 
(1819-1892), a native of Boston, who practised there 
and in England his profession of dental surgeon, was an 
accomplished Dante scholar and a poet of exquisitely 
fine grain though of limited range. ^ He did not write 
much, but nearly all is precious for its justness of thought 
and feeling, its classic finish, artistic restraint, and 
terse strength, without frigidity, and its occasional quiet 
pleasantry and Attic wit. His translation of the Inferno, 
in te7^za rima, is highly prized by scholar-poets, and his 
lines On a Bust of Dante have much of the master's 
austere beauty and sadness. Josiah G. Holland (1819- 
1881), an editor of The Springfield Republican (1849- 
1866) and founder of The Century Magazine, was of more 
ordinary temper; but his poems, which deal much with 
domestic love and sorrow, have a refined sweetness and 
purity of spirit, and his novels are clever and gracious. 
In the literary atmosphere implied by the presence 
and activity of so many talented authors, lived and wrote 
six poets, essayists, and novelists whose works consti- 
tute a large part of the strength and beauty of American 

1 His principal writings are a translation of Dante {Inferno : Cantos 
L-X., 1843; Cantos L-XVIL, 1865; complete, 1867; portions oi Pur- 
gatorio and Paradiso, 1893) ; Poems, 1854; The Magnolia a?id Other 
Poems, 1867; The Old House at Sudbury, 1870; The Shadow of the Obe- 
lisk, and Other Posms, 1872. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 177 

literature. Longfellow, Emerson, Hawthorne, Whittier, 
Lowell, and Holmes were, with one exception, natives of 
Massachusetts, and all were long resident there, most of 
them living in or near Boston or Cambridge. This con- 
centration'of literary talent and genius in one state, and 
in the neighborhood of one city, was not an accident. 
As we have already seen, New England had from colonial 
days been the intellectual and literary leader of the 
country; Massachusetts was the head of New England; 
and Boston was the eye of Massachusetts. By heredity, 
tradition, and acquired momentum the Bay State still 
kept the lead in mental activity; Unitarianism and the 
Transcendental movement added an intellectual freedom 
and freshness not elsewhere attained so early in like 
degree; and Harvard College, its roots now deep in the 
past, bore in larger measure with every succeeding year 
the beautiful fruit of a ripe culture. 
- The life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow^ was 

1 Life. Bom in Portland, Me., Feb. 27, 1807. Educated in private 
schools and Portland Academy, 1810-1821 ; at Bowdoin College, enter- 
ing the sophomore class, 1822-1825. In France, Spain, Italy, Germany, 
England, 1826-1829, Professor of Modern Languages at Bowdoin, 
1829-1835, Married Mary S. Potter, 1831. In England, Denmark, Swe- 
den, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, 1835-1836. Wife died, 1835. 
Professor of Modern Languages at Harvard, 1836-1854 ; lodging in the 
Craigie House, 1837-1843. In France, Germany, England, 1842. Mar- 
ried Frances E. Appleton, 1843 ; her father purchased the Craigie House 
for the poet, 1843; two sons and four daughters (one of whom died in 
infancy) were born to him. Wife died, 1861. In England, Germany, 
Switzerland, France, Italy, Scotland, 1868-1869. Received degree of 
LL.D. from Cambridge University, England, 1868; of D.C.L. from 
Oxford, 1869. Longfellow Day established in Cincinnati public schools, 
1880. Died in Cambridge, Mass., March 24, 1882; was buried at Mt. 
Auburn. Bust of the poet placed in Westminster Abbey, 1884. A 
Unitarian. 

Works. Miscellaneous Poems selected from The U?iited States Lit- 
erary Gazette, 1826. Coplas de Don Jorge Manrique, translated from 
N 



178 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

singularly beautiful, the more beautiful for the deep 
shadows that suddenly fell athwart its placid sunshine. 
The best New England blood ran in his veins. His 
mother, an ardent lover of poetry, music, and nature, 
was descended from John Alden. His father, an emi- 
nent lawyer and a trustee of Bowdoin College, came of 
Yorkshire stock transplanted to Massachusetts about the 
year 1676. The child was from the first truthful, 
gentle, and studious, having natural beauty and grace of 
soul; and yet, although girlishly averse to rudeness and 
vulgarity, he was essentially a manly boy. At the age 
of thirteen he wrote a poem which was printed in The 
Portland Gazette ;^ it was not remarkable, nor were the 
other verses and the essays which he contributed to vari- 
ous periodicals during his school and college life. At 
Bowdoin he graduated fourth in a class of thirty-eight; 
Hawthorne was one of his classmates, but the two were 

the Spanish ; with an Introductory Essay on the Moral and Devotional 
Poetry of Spain, 1833. The Schoolmaster (six contributions to The 
New England Magaziite , being first sketches for Outre-Mer), 1831-1833. 
Outre-Mer, No. I., 1833; No. II., 1834; completed in book form, 1835. 
Hyperion, 1839. Voices of the Night, 1839. Ballads and Other Poems, 
1841. Poems on Slavery, 1842. The Spanish Student, 1843. The 
Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems, 1845 (imprint, 1846). Evangeline, 
1847. Kavanagh, 1849. The Seaside and the Fireside, 1850. The 
Golden Legend, 1851. The Song of Hiawatha, 1855. The Courtship 
of Miles Standish, 1858. Tales of a Wayside Inn (First Day), 1863. 
Flower-de-Luce, 1867. Translation of Dante's Divina Commedia, 1867- 
1870. The New England Tragedies, 1868. The Divine Tragedy, 1871. 
Christus (consisting of the Golden Legend, The New England Trage- 
dies, and the Divine Tragedy), 1872. Three Books of Song (con- 
taining Tales of a Wayside Inn, Second Day; etc.), 1872. Aftermath 
(containing Tales of a Wayside Inn, Third Day; etc.), 1873. The 
Masque of Pandora and Other Poems, 1875. Keramos and Other Poems, 
1878. Ultima Thule, 1880. In the Harbor, 1882. Michael Angelo, 1883. 
Several of the shorter poems were published first in magazines. 

1 Longfellow denied that he wrote the doggerel about Mr. Finney and 
the turnip. See Longfellow's life of Longfellow, Vol. I., p. 22. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 179 

not yet intimate. After graduation, being offered the 
professorship of modern languages in his Alma Mater, 
he went abroad to fit himself more fully for the position. 
On his return he entered zealously upon his duties, and 
was a popular and inspiring teacher. He also found 
time to contribute articles to The North Afnerican 
Revieiv, and to write his first book. At the end of five 
years, being invited to succeed George Ticknor in the 
chair of modern languages at Harvard University, he 
sailed again for Europe to perfect his knowledge of 
German and to study the Scandinavian tongues. The 
death of his wife in Rotterdam, after a short illness, 
was a cruel blow; but he held to his course, and out of 
his sorrow and his deeper acquaintance with the life 
and literature of Germany came, in after years, the 
romance Hyperion and the distinctive quality of many 
of his poems. 

Longfellow's life at Cambridge for many years flowed 
on with the tranquil beauty of his own beloved river 
Charles. His surroundings were congenial. Professor 
Felton and Charles Sumner soon became his intimate 
friends,^ and he had delightful companionship with 
Sparks, Prescott, Ticknor, Norton, Emerson, Haw- 
thorne, Holmes, Lowell, and others. -^ The void in his 

1 The three, with George S. Hillard and Henry R. Cleveland, formed 
a circle which they called " The Five of Clubs." The newspapers 
afterward dubbed it " The Mutual Admiration Society," because the 
members reviewed each other's writings favorably ; over one such review 
a reader wrote, " Insured in the Mutual." 

2 In a letter to his friend, George W. Greene, in 1838, he thus 
describes his life during the summer vacation: "I breakfast ^t seven 
on tea and toast, and dine at five or six, generally in Boston. In the 
evening I walk on the Common with Hillard, or alone ; then go back 
to Cambridge on foot. If not very late, I sit an hour with Felton or 
Sparks. For nearly two years I have not studied at night. . . . Most 



i8o THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

life which even his friends could not remove was at 
length filled by his marriage to a lovely woman of culti- 
vated intellect; and children came, to make his cup of 
domestic happiness overflow. As a professor he was 
popular; but finding that the routine dulled his poetic 
powers, he finally resigned.^ His poems meanwhile had 
been winning a wider and wider circle of readers.^ 
His family were growing up around him in health and 
happiness, and the bonds uniting him to his wife had 
only strengthened with time. The tranquil joy of his 
life seemed but the natural and due reward of the beauty 
of his character.^ Suddenly, with no more warning than 
precedes the lightning flash, there fell upon him a 

of the time am alone; smoke a good deal; wear a broad-brimmed 
black hat, black frock-coat, black cane. Molest no one. Dine out 
frequently. In winter go much into Boston society." — Longfellow's 
life of Longfellow, Vol. L, p. 293. 

1 " The seventy lectures to which I am doomed next year hang over 
me like a dark curtain." — Journal, April 22, 1850. " This college work 
is like a great hand laid on all the strings of my lyre^ stopping their 
vibration." — Journal, Nov. 18, 1850. 

2 By 1857, the sales of his works in the United States alone had been 
as follows: Voices of the Night, 43,550; Ballads, etc., 40,470; Spanish 
Student, 38,400 ; Belfry of Bruges, 38,300 ; Evangeline, 35,850 ; Seaside, 
etc., 30,000; Golden Legend, 17,188; Hiawatha, 50,000; Outre-Mer, 
7500; Hyperion, 14,550; Kavanagh, 10,500. Of Miles Standish, 5000 
copies were sold in Boston by noon of the first day ; in London, 10,000 
the first day. — Longfellow's life of Longfellow, Vol. IL, pp. 295, 325-327. 
The poet's income from his writings was ^219 in 1840; ^517 in 1842; 
^1800 in 1846; ^1900 in 1850; then $2500 and ^iioo. — Final Memo- 
rials, p. 435. 

3 His freedom from bitterness, and his sunny-hearted charity, at a 
point where authors are apt to be most sensitive, is illustrated by his 
remark upon hearing of the death of Poe, who had accused him of 
plagiarism and ridiculed his hexameters: "What a melancholy death 
is that of Mr. Poe, — a man so richly endowed with genius ! . . . The 
harshness of his criticisms I have never attributed to anything but the 
irritation of a sensitive nature chafed by some indefinite sense ot 
wrong." — Longfellow's life of Longfellow, Vol. IL, p. 150. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. i8i 

calamity, the sorest which could come to a man of such 
depth ot domestic affection. His wife was one day sit- 
ting in the library, sealing up some packages of her 
little daughters' curls, when a match set fire to her dress; 
Longfellow was himself severely burned in his efforts to 
put out the flames, but she died the next day. "He 
bore his grief with courage and in silence. . . . To 
a brother far distant he wrote: *And now, of what we 
are both thinking I can write no word. God's will 
be done.' To a visitor, who expressed the hope that 
he might be enabled to 'bear his cross' with patience, 
he replied: 'Bear the cross, yes; but what if one is 
stretched upon it?'"^ Gradually, however, his cheer- 
fulness returned, although at the depths he was hence- 
forth a lonely man. After his last trip abroad, he passed 
his days in quiet content and leisurely labor beneath 
the Cambridge elms. One by one many of his old 
friends fell by the way, and in 1881 his own health 
began to show signs of breaking. His last illness, 
however, was brief. On a Saturday four schoolboys 
from Boston visited him, and were kindly enter- 
tained; with one exception, they were the last guests 
of the "Children's Poet." That night he was taken 
violently ill. On the following Friday he died, and 
two nations mourned at his grave. "The key to his 
character," writes his brother, "was sympathy. This 
made him the gentle and courteous receiver of every 
visitor, however obscure, however tedious; the ready re- 
sponder to every appeal to his pity and his purse; . . . 
the charitable judge of motives, and excuser of mistakes 
and offences; the delicate yet large liker. . . . This 

1 Longfellow's life of Longfellow, Vol. II., p. 369. 



i82 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

gave to his poetry the human element which made . . . 
in thousands of hearts in many lands a shrine of rever- 
ence and affection for his name."^ 

Longfellow's magazine articles^ had no permanent 
value, and his prose romances appealed to a taste which 
has largely passed away. In Outre- Mer one may, how- 
ever, still enjoy the freshness of a young poet's dehght 
in visiting the enchanted land of France, Spain, and 
Italy. Hyperion^ which is essentially autobiographical, 
runs over with poetic enthusiasm for the newly dis- 
covered wealth of romance in German scenery, legend, 
and Uterature, at the same time teaching, after Goethe, 
that sorrow is good for the soul.^ Kavanagh paints life 
in a New England village with the quietness and thinness 
of a water-color. In manner, all three show strongly the 
influence of Irving, through whose Sketch-Book Long- 
fellow in boyhood entered the wonder- world of Hterature; 
but, especially in Hyperion^ the style is more flowery, and 
the sentiment more often degenerates into sentimen- 
taUty. Yet the books are full of their author's sweet 
graciousness, and contain passages of pure and dehcate 
beauty. 

Longfellow's verse includes lyrics and other short 
poems, long narrative poems, dramas, and translations. 
Most of the short poems may be roughly classified, ac- 
cording to their predominant element, into three groups, 

1 Life of Longfellow, Vol. II., p. 474. 

2 As Oright and Progress of the French Language {North American 
Review, April, 1831) ; The Defence of Poetry {ibid., January, 1832) ; 
Hawthorne s Twice 'fold Tales {ibid., July, 1837) ; Anglo-Saxon Litera- 
ture {ibid., July, 1838). 

3 Richter, however, seems to have made the strongest impression 
upon Longfellow at this time. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 183 

which, however, flow into each other freely, — didactic 
poems, poems of the affections, and poems more imagi- 
native and objective. The didactic poems, A Fsalj?i of 
Life at their head, often contain more preaching than 
poetry. In some of them, however, as The Rainy Day, 
the lesson is gracefully combined with poetic beauty. It 
must be remembered, also, that Longfellow was writing 
chiefly for the descendants of Puritans, and gave them 
as much pure beauty as many were capable of receiving. 
In poems of the second group, of which The Village 
Blacksmith and The Old Clock on the Stairs are repre- 
sentative, pictorial or emotional elements are a larger 
part of the whole, and exist more for their own sake. 
These simple poems, in which Longfellow touches the 
human heart with gentle power, contain some of his 
most characteristic work. His lines about children, and 
about his friends living or dead, still further prove his 
right to be called the poet of the domestic aflections. 
And his words upon the sorrow and mystery of life, and 
upon the consolations of religion — which with him is 
always a very human thing, — are so full of natural 
nobleness and childlike reverence that they soothe and 
purify. In poems of the third group the imaginative 
and poetic quality is occasionally high. As poetry the 
Midnight Mass for the Dying Year is worth innumerable 
Psalms of Life ; and it is almost incredible that Excelsior 
came from the same hand, and at the same time, as the 
finely imaginative Skeleton in Arinor, The many poems 
whose subject, manner, and metre are derived from for- 
eign sources, especially from German, remind us anew 
how great was this scholar-poet's indebtedness to the 
history, legends, hfe, and hteratures of the Old World. 



i84 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

The nature poems, on the other hand, often show the 
influence of Bryant. But even in lines most after the 
manner of the earlier poet, as The Spirit of Poetry and 
Rain in Sum7?ter, there is felt the tender grace peculiar 
to Longfellow ; while in poetry of the sea the author of 
The Wi'eck of the Hesperus, The Building of the Ship, 
The Secret of the Sea, and The Lighthouse has no rival 
among American poets, except Walt Whitman. He wrote 
well of the ''awful, pitiless sea'* ; but he loved most to 
sing of its beauty and mystery and romance, and it is 
that which he has interpreted best. Longfellow was 
never active in the aboUtionist cause. It was not his 
part to go in sackcloth and ashes, and cry, " Woe unto 
Nineveh 1 " He belonged, rather, to the sons of Korah, 
who by their songs make more beautiful the courts of 
the Lord. His Poems on Slavery, therefore, although 
sincere enough, seem bookish and tame in comparison 
with Whittier's fiery blasts. The sonnet of the trumpet 
note, the organ tone, or the passionate love-cry Long- 
fellow could not command. But the sonnet of quiet 
beauty, of gentle sadness, whose music is like the breath- 
ings of a lute, he wrote well, conforming strictly to the 
exacting Italian form, yet without apparent sacrifice of 
naturalness or ease.^ Most of Longfellow's finest short 
poems were written in youth and middle age ; but he 
continued singing under the evening sky, and a little 
of his best work was done then. The earlier poems 
have more freshness and charm ; but the later usually 
contain fewer positive faults, and are freighted with a 
richer experience of life.- 

1 See Nature, My Cathedral, and Divina Comtnedia (Sonnet I.). 

2 See Flower -de- Luce, Hawthorne, Killed at the Ford, Charles Sum- 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 185 

Longfellow was fortunate in the subject of his first long 
narrative poem. In Evangeline he worked upon a story 
of singular beauty and pathos, and had a heroine whose 
pure and gentle nature he was peculiarly fitted to portray. 
In truth, Evangehne seems less an individual character 
than an ideal abstraction, the embodiment of woman's 
deathless love. The setting is vitally related to the central 
figure. The picture of the harmless life of the Acadian 
farmers heightens our sense of the lovely innocence of the 
heroine, in whom that life attains its perfection. Grand- 
Pr6 is the dove-cote of the dove, who is soon to receive a 
crimson wound in her white bosom and be driven forth 
to wander desolate over the world.^ In Part Second the 
descriptions contrast Evangeline's sohtude with the re- 
gained happiness of her friends, and help the reader to 
realize the vastness and wildness of the West and the 
consequent heroism, yet hopelessness, of her search. 
The final meeting of the aged lovers, in the fever hospi- 
tal, is a picture, at once beautiful and pathetic, of spiritual 
love immortal amidst the body's decay. The metre of 
the poem has provoked much discussion. What is cer- 
tain is that EngUsh hexameters can be natural and musi- 
cal, but that in a long poem in that metre it seems very 
difficult to avoid many awkward or prosaic hues. Thus 
Evangeline contains numerous verses, and a few entire 



ner, Belisarius, Three Friends of Miiie (Sonnet II., on Professor Felton), 
Chaucer, Keramos, A Ballad of the French Fleet, The Leap of Roushan 
Beg, Bayard Taylor, Fro?n My Arm- Chair, Mad River, The Bells of 
Sa?t Bias. 

1 Longfellow of course sacrifices historical accuracy to pathos. In 
fact, save for a vague reference to Louisburg, Beau Sejour, and Port 
Royal, the poem contains no hint of the cause of the Acadians' re- 
moval. 



i86 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

passages, which flow easily and melodiously;^ others in 
which the hexameter movement has been secured by an 
unnatural word-order ; ^ and still others which, if printed 
as prose, would be read as such.^ Yet the metre seems, 
on the whole, to be well fitted to the poem, by reason of 
its rapidity, dignity, and flexibility, although it is a ques- 
tion whether the efl'ect would not be finer, on the whole, 
had the story been told in the dehcate, light-footed verse 
of Lancelot and Elaine,^ 

The Courtship of Miles Standishy being in lighter vein, 
allowed more scope to the poet's pleasant humor. In 
how kindly a fashion does this play around the doughty 

1 Over the pallid sea and the silvery mist of the meadows. 
Day after day they glided adown the turbulent river. 

Part Second, Section II., has many beautiful lines and goes well as a 
whole. 

2 See Part First, Section I., the second paragraph. 

3 •' It was a band of exiles : a raft, as it were, from the shipwrecked 
nation, scattered along the coast, now floating together." (Part Second, 
Section II.) 

4 The success of the hexameter in German poetry, notably in Goethe's 
Hermann und Dorothea, no doubt emboldened Longfellow to make the 
courageous experiment of writing his first long poem in this then unfa- 
miliar metre. But even now the English hexameter is inferior to the 
German. One reason may be that English is too monosyllabic. The 
paucity of good spondees in English is surely another difficulty, lead- 
ing either to an excess of dactyls, the jounce and clatter of which 
finally fatigue, or to trochaic lines, which have not sufficient fulness of 
sound and majesty of movement. The poverty of the sensuous effect in 
this trochaic line from Evangeline : — 

List to a tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy, 

is doubly apparent in comparison with the following full-throated line, 
rich in spondees, from Kingsley's Andromeda : — 

Whirled in the white-linked dance, with the gold-crowned Hours and 
the Graces. 

In general, Longfellow paid too little attention to quantity in his hex- 
ameters. Miles Standisk is written with a somewhat freer hand, but 
there are fewer musical lines. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 187 

little Puritan captain and his refreshingly unsanctified 
anger ; around the master of the departing " Mayflower," 
glad to be gone from a land where there was *' plenty of 
nothing but Gospel," and 

. . . taking each by the hand, as if he were grasping a tiller; 

even around the hero, rather needlessly distraught by the 
struggle between his love and his Puritanic conscience. 
Yet there is no lack of admiration for the great quahties 
of the Pilgrims : — 
O strong hearts and true ! not one went back in the May Flower ! 

In fact, the whole poem is a sympathetic and truthful 
picture of the early days of Plymouth Colony. The his- 
torical value is rather increased than diminished by the 
prominence given to the love story ; w^e are apt to over- 
look the purely human side of the Hfe of the Puritans, 
half forgetting that they loved, married, and reared chil- 
dren as well as prayed, fasted, and cast out devils. The 
best thing in the poem is the nobility of Priscilla's 
womanhood ; the next best, the feminine tact with which 
she manages her lover for his own good, in spite of the 
restraints of her sex and sect and his conscience-begotten 
blundering. 

Before Longfellow's day, poems on the American 
aborigines had been mostly failures. In them the Indian 
usually appeared either as a repulsive savage or as a sen- 
timental and romantic white man in a red skin. But in 
Hiawatha, by happy intuition, Longfellow seized upon 
the legends and myths of the Indian as the subject for his 
poem, which could thus be at once poetic and real.^ 

1 See also Longfellow's early handling of Indian life in Burial of the 
Minnisink, and in Part Second, Section IV., of Evangeline. 



i88 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

Hiawatha is fresh and beautiful 

With the odors of the forest, 
With the dew and damp of meadows, 
With the curHng smoke of wigwams. 
With the rushing of great rivers. 

The mind of the childhood of a race is seen in the 
lovely personifications of the East Wind and the West 
Wind ; in the fancy of the Milky Way as the pathway of 
ghosts ; in the boyish humor and love of the marvellous 
which pervade the stories of Hiawatha's fishing and the 
pranks of Pau-Puk-Keewis ; in the naive but powerful 
imagination which conceived the ravenous ghosts that 
for many days lodge in Hiawatha's wigwam, 

Cowering, crouching with the shadows, 

and at last are discovered 

Sitting upright on their couches, 
Weeping in the silent midnight, 

because the living do not really desire the return of the 
dead. But even the poetry of the Indians Longfellow 
has somewhat ideahzed, chiefly by the rejection of capri- 
cious and malignant elements in the character of his 
hero, who is much more like an Indian King Arthur 
than is the Hiawatha of the original legends.^ The 
verse and style of Hiawatha (upon the model of the 
Finnish epic, Kalevala)^ although monotonous upon 
prolonged reading, are peculiarly fitted to the substance 
and spirit of the poem. The short phrases and simple 
sentences, the frequent repetitions and parallelisms, the 

1 See The Myth of Hiawatha, by H. R. Schoolcraft, Philadelphia and 
London, 1856. 

2 See the English translation by J. M. Crawford. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 189 

quick trochaic movement, the absence of rhyme or 
stanza, suggest the childlike character of these legends, 
and the swaying boughs, quivering leaves, and leaping 
brooks to the music of which they were first narrated. 

Tales of 'a Wayside Lui show the hand of an experi- 
enced literary craftsman and wide reading in many 
tongues, but also a dechne of creative power with the 
coming on of age. Longfellow's dramas are, as a class, 
the poorest of his work. Judas Maccabceus and The 
Masque of Pandora are feeble. Michael Angelo is 
written in the author's best mature style and contains 
noble passages, especially those interpreting the spirit 
of Michael Angelo and Benvenuto Cellini ; the work 
deserves to be more read, but it is a loosely connected 
series of dialogues and monologues rather than a dra- 
matic poem. The Divine Tragedy, consisting of scenes 
from the life of Christ, in a bare paraphrase of Scripture 
language, is painfully inadequate. The New Englarid 
Tragedies, although they report accurately the facts and 
spirit of the Quaker persecutions and the Salem Witch- 
craft, sadly lack imaginative sweep and power. Long- 
fellow's best dramatic poems are The Spanish Student diVid 
The Golden Legend, in which his humor, lyric gift, and 
poetic insight into Spanish and mediaeval life found free ex- 
pression. The first is full of the passion, romance, and 
gayety of youth and Spain, and contains Longfellow's 
best song, Stars of the Summer Night. The second, in 
addition to poetic charm, has great merit as an interpre- 
tation of the many-sided life of the Middle Ages.^ As 

1 " Longfellow, in The Golden Legend, has entered more closely into 
the temper of the Monk, for good and for evil, than ever yet theological 
writer or historian." — Ruskin, in Modern Painters, Vol. IV., Chap. 20, 



190 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

a translator Longfellow's career was long and brilliant. 
He early revealed a rare gift in rendering the airy grace 
of the French, the tender richness of the Spanish, and 
the mysticism, romance, and deep-heartedness of the 
German into idiomatic and musical English verse. His 
great achievement in translation is the version of Dante's 
Divina Cofnmedia, which occupied him at intervals dur- 
ing the greater part of his adult life ; fidelity was secured 
at considerable loss of poeticalness and ease, but the 
work is nevertheless a noble offering to the memory of 
the great Italian. 

Longfellow had much in common with Irving. His 
character had the same simpHcity and gentleness; his 
culture was essentially European, although it consisted 
with warm patriotism and the choice of American sub- 
jects for many of his best poems ; his gifts were affection, 
sentiment, and taste, not trenchant intellect, intense 
passion, or high imagination. In humor and satire he 
was inferior to Irving, but the place of these was more 
than filled by poetic vision and melodious song. Long- 
fellow is not a great poet. There are heights and depths, 
splendors and glooms, in life and the soul, which his 
muse of the fireside and the library could not touch. 



5 32. " The story is told, and perhaps invented, by Hartmann von der 
Aue, a Minnesinger of the twelfth century. The original [^Der Arme 
HeinricK\ may be found in Mailath's Altdeutsche Gedichte, with a mod- 
ern German version." — Longfellow's note. See also Friedrich Miinz- 
ner'sZ^2> Quellen zu Longfellows Golden Legend (Dresden, 1897). The 
dramas gain nothing by being put together and called Christus. Yet 
the plan of such a work was early conceived and long cherished : " This 
evening it has come into my mind to undertake a long and elaborate 
poem by the holy name of Christ ; the theme of which would be the 
various aspects of Christendom in the Apostolic, Middle, and Modern 
Ages." — Longfellow's Journal, November 8, 1841. 



UNITARIANISM. 191 

In early years he did not wholly escape the prevrilent 
taste for commonplace sentiment. His Puritan ancestry 
and New England environment made him over anxious 
to point the moral; he was not enough content to let 
incident, c-haracter, and scenery produce their own effect. 
But nevertheless his artistic instinct was large, and he 
came into many bare New England homes as an apostle 
of new and wondrous beauty. Much of his work will 
long live, because it touches the heart, refines the spirit, 
and has for the senses a gentle charm. In the purity, 
sweetness, and harmony of his nature Longfellow is one 
of the world's elect. 

Longfellow's unspeculative nature held him aloof from 
the theological and philosophical controversies of his 
day. The life and work of Emerson, on the contrary, 
cannot be understood without first glancing at the history 
of theology and philosophy in New England since the 
middle of the eighteenth century.^ Down to the time 
of the Great Awakening, in 1 734-1 744, Calvinism had 
reigned almost undisputed in New England. But the 
reaction against the emotional excesses of that tre- 
mendous revival brought to the surface the more liberal 
tendencies which had doubtless been germinating in the 
soil for some time. Contemporary liberal thought in 
England furthered their growth. The dispute turned 
at first upon the question how far man's will might be 
an agent in effecting his conversion. The school of 
which Jonathan Edwards was the head asserted the 

1 It will be understood, of course, that we here have nothing to do 
with the truth or error of the opinions referred to, but only with their 
history and their relation to literature. Thus the words " liberal," 
"orthodox," etc., are used wholly in their historical sense and without 
any intention to imply approval or disapproval. 



192 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

absolute sovereignty of God in this act, as in all others; ^ 
the Arminian school, of which Charles Chauncy and 
Jonathan Mayhew were the earliest leaders, affirmed that 
the sinner, by diligently cultivating the means of grace, 
and so fulfilling the conditions for receiving it, might 
cooperate in his own regeneration. From this small 
beginning the breach widened more and 'more. The 
doctrine of the Trinity was soon openly attacked; and, 
although the political ferment of the Revolution drew 
men's thoughts largely away from theological questions, 
Unitarianism quietly spread in eastern Massachusetts, 
until, at the close of the century, there was scarcely a 
Trinitarian Congregational clergyman in Boston. No 
open separation, however, had yet occurred. With the 
new century there came a change. The appointment 
of five Unitarians to professorships in Harvard College, 
in 1805-1807, made clear the position of that venerable 
institution. By 18 15 circumstances had compelled the 
liberal party reluctantly to accept the distinctive title of 
"Unitarian." Four years later, aroused by Channing's 
famous sermon at Baltimore on Unitarian Christianity, 
the denomination assumed a more confident and aggres- 
sive attitude, and entered upon a period of controversy 
and expansion. 

Emerson inherited whatever of mental breadth and 
spiritual inspiration the earlier Unitarianism had to 

1 Edwards's greatest work, on the freedom of the will, was written to 
refute the Arminian doctrine of the will. His position is (i) that the 
will is "that by which the mind chooses anything"; (2) that "the will 
is always determined by the strongest motive " ; (3) that to the evil man 
evil appeals more strongly than good does, and that he is therefore 
•' morally," though not " naturally," unable to choose the good ; (4) that, 
consequently, man is wholly dependent upon the grace of God for a 
change of heart; (5) that, nevertheless, since the sinner does what he 



TRANSCENDENTALISM. 193 

give. But its direct service to him in this kind was 
small. "The Unitarians of New England," says O. B. 
Frothingham, who will not be accused of understating 
their merits, "belonged ... to the class which looked 
without for knowledge, rather than within for inspira- 
tion. . . . The Unitarian was disquieted by mysticism, 
enthusiasm, and rapture. . . . Even Doctor Channing 
clung to the philosophical traditions that were his in- 
heritance from England."^ But indirectly, by what it 
allowed to enter from without, Unitarianism greatly 
assisted in the development of Emerson's genius. It 
will be no more than fair to hear what Mr. Frothingham 
has to say on this side also: "The Unitarians . . . 
acknowledged themselves to be friends of free thought 
in religion. This was their distinction. They dis- 
avowed sympathy with dogmatism. . . . They hon- 
estly but incautiously professed a principle broader 
than they were able to stand by, and avowed the abso- 
lute freedom of the human mind as their characteristic 
faith. . . . The literature on their tables represented 
a wide mental activity. Their libraries contained 
authors never found before on ministerial shelves."^ 
Hence it happened that the sect which had within its 
own ranks less of severe metaphysical ability than some 
of the orthodox denominations, did more than any other 
religious body to encourage the introduction into 
America of the new German philosophy. New England 
Transcendentalism had its roots in the philosophy of 
Kant. In opposition to the philosophy of Locke, the 

\;hooses, and chooses evil because of his own wickedness, not because 
of outward compulsion, he is justly held responsible by God. 

1 Transcendentalism in New England, p. no. 2 Ibid., p. 114. 

O 



194 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

prevailing system of thought in England and America, a 
system which, by its assumption that all knowledge is 
derived from experience through the senses, tended 
logically to materialism and scepticism, Kant sought to 
show that the ideas of the Reason — the Soul, the Uni- 
verse as One, the Absolute Being, or God — are not 
derived from experience, but are implanted in the very 
constitution of the mind, which thus has intuitive knowl- 
edge of high truths that can never be reached by the 
merely logical understanding or the physical senses. The 
ideas of Kant were further developed by Fichte, Schel- 
ling, Hegel, and other German philosophers; clothed 
with poetic beauty and mystical fervor by Goethe and 
Richter; expounded with the elegant lucidity of the 
agile French mind by Cousin, Constant, and others; 
transplanted into England in the writings of Coleridge 
and Carlyle; and, chiefly in their French or English 
dress, brought to America during Emerson's youth and 
early manhood.-^ The new idealism contributed its share 

1 " Few [American scholars] read German, but most read French. 
As early as 1804, Degerando lectured on Kant's philosophy, in Paris ; 
and as early as 18 13, Madame de Stael gave an account of it. . . . The 
works of Coleridge made familiar the leading ideas of Schelling. The 
foreign reviews reported the results and processes of French and Ger- 
man speculation. In 1827, Thomas Carlyle wrote, in the Edinburgh 
Review, his great articles on Richter and the State of German Literature ; 
in 1828 appeared his essay on Goethe. Mr. Emerson presented these 
and other papers, as Carlyle s Miscellanies, to the American public. 
\Sartor Resartus was reprinted in America in 1836.] In 1830, George 
Ripley began the publication of the Specimens of Standard Foreign Lit- 
erature. . . . These volumes . . . brought many readers into a close 
acquaintance with the teaching and the spirit of writers of the new 
school."-— Transcendentalism in New England, pp. 115-117. The in- 
fluence of Coleridge upon the philosophy of James Marsh, president 
and professor at the University of Vermont, deserves passing mention ; 
in 1829 he published a Preliminary Essay to Coleridge's Aids to 
Refiection, 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 195 

to the so-called "Romantic movement," which, in the 
latter part of the eighteenth century and the early part 
of the nineteenth, did so much to break through the 
crust of tradition and turn fresh streams of thought and 
feeling into nearly every department of life in the prin- 
cipal countries of Europe. In New England likewise, 
within a narrow circle, the new ideas exerted a power- 
ful influence for a time, as will appear more fully in the 
course of our study of the "Sage of Concord." 

Ralph Waldo Emerson^ was descended from a re- 
markably long line of clergymen and scholars, beginning 
with Peter Bulkeley, Fellow of St. John's College, 
Cambridge, who in 1634 fled from the persecution of 
Laud and settled at Concord. Emerson's grandfather, 
William Emerson, was builder of the "Old Manse," 
pastor at Concord in 1775, an ardent patriot, an elo- 

1 Life. Born in Boston, May 25, 1803. Attended Latin School, 
1813-1817 ; Harvard College, 1817-1821 ; taught school in or near Boston, 
1821-1826; attended Harvard Divinity School, 1825-1828; licensed to 
preach, 1826. Spent winter of 1826-1827 in the South. Became pastor 
of Old North Church, Boston, 1829. Married Ellen Tucker, 1829; she 
died, 1832. Resigned his pastorate, 1832. In Italy, France, England, 
1832-1833. Lecturing, 1832-1 872: chiefly in New England, 1832-1847; 
in Scotland and England, 1847-1848 ; in New England, Middle States, 
and West, 1851-1872. Settled in Concord, 1834. Married Lidian Jack- 
son, 1835 ; two sons and tw^o daughters were born to him. Visited Eng- 
land and France, 1847-1848. Given degree of LL.D. by Harvard, and 
elected college overseer, 1866. Visited California, 1871. House burned, 
1872. In England, France, Italy, Egypt, 1872-1873. Died at Concord, 
April 27, 1882. 

Works. Nature, 1836. Essays : First Series, 1841 ; Second Series, 
1844. Contributions to The Dial, 1840-1844. Poems, 1847. Miscella- 
nies (Nature, Addresses, Lectures), 1849. Representative Men, 1850. 
English Traits, 1856. Conduct of Life, i860. May-Day and Other 
Pieces (poems), 1867. Society and Solitude, 1870. Letters and Social 
Aims, 1876. Correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson, 1883. Natural 
History of the Intellect, 1893 (lectures at Harvard and elsewhere, reprints 
from The Dial, etc.). 



196 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

quent preacher, and a man of marked literary tastes. 
Kis father, of the same name, pastor of the First Church, 
Boston, also had high reputation as a preacher and stu- 
dent. He died when Waldo was eight years old, so that 
the boy's home training was received chiefly from his 
mother, a woman of peculiar serenity of temper; his 
aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, of remarkable intellect and 
character, also exerted a strong influence over him for 
many years. Emerson's distinctive genius, like Mil- 
ton's, came into full bloom rather late. But he seems 
early to have had a certain general maturity, and his 
spiritual nature was, from the first, of singular elevation 
and charm. ^ At college he was only a fair scholar, 
having no faculty for mathematics and pursuing a desul- 
tory course of private reading with more industry than 
the prescribed studies; but he took a prize for declama- 
tion, and two prizes for dissertations, and graduated 
somewhat above the middle of his class. ^ As a teacher, 
Emerson was much respected and loved ; but he found 
the work very irksome, and gladly relinquished it, after 
four profitable years, to begin his studies in divinity. 

1 " I don't think he ever engaged in boy's play ; . . . simply because, 
from his earliest years, he dwelt in a higher sphere." " A spiritual-look- 
ing boy in blue nankeen, . . . whose image, more than any other's, is 
still deeply stamped upon my mind as I then saw him and loved him, 
I knew not why, and thought him so angelic and remarkable." — Remi- 
niscences by two schoolmates, in J. E. Cabot's Meinoir of Emerso7i^ 
Vol. I., pp. 5, 6. 

2 In his first year he served as " President's freshman," or messenger, 
and waited on table at the college commons. A classmate says : " By 
degrees . . . the more studious members of his class began to seek him 
out. They found him to be unusually thoughtful and well-read. . . . 
He had studied the early English dramatists and poets, pored over 
Montaigne, and knew Shakespeare almost by heart. In his sophomore 
year he became the leading spirit in a little book-club." —Cabot, Vol. I., 
pp. 59, 63. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 197 

An affection of the eyes and symptoms of consumption, 
the latter compelling him to spend one winter in Florida, 
interfered greatly with his theological course. But 
during these years of leisurely reading and meditation 
his nature,' by the privilege of genius, was doubtless 
absorbing the food it most needed and slowly growing 
toward maturity.^ 

Soon after leaving the divinity school he married, and 
entered upon what he supposed would be his life-work 
as a Unitarian clergyman. Three years brought serious 
changes. Mrs. Emerson's death took the sunshine out 
of his home, and a few months later he felt obliged to 
resign his pastorate. This step, occasioned by difference 
of opinion about the Lord's Supper, was the first clear 
intimation that Emerson was finding the Unitarian faith 
too narrow for his expanding thought. For several 
years he continued to preach as occasion offered; but 
his religious ideas differed more and more from those 
of the Unitarians as a body, and his address before the 
Harvard Divinity School, in 1838, raised a storm of 
alarm, being condemned by prominent liberal clergy- 
men as anti-Christian and even atheistical. Mean- 
while Emerson had found his vocation. As a lecturer 
he had peculiar charm, — the triple charm of a fascinat- 
ing voice, brilliant thought, and a personality singularly 



1 Doctor F. H. Hedge, who first met Emerson in 1828, says : "There 
was no presage then, that I remember, of his future greatness. . . . He 
never jested ; a certain reserve in his manner restrained the jesting pro- 
pensity and any license of speech in others. He was slow in his move- 
ments, as in his speech. . . . No one, I think, ever saw him run. In 
ethics he held very positive opinions. Here his native independence of 
thought was manifest. ' Owe no conformity to custom,' he said, 
'against your private judgment.' " — Cabot, Vol. I., p. 138. 



198 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

winning and spiritually stimulating. It was the day of 
the "lyceum," and many talented lecturers regularly 
went about the country. But Emerson was, on the 
whole, the prince of them all. Year after year, while 
other lecturers, seemingly more eloquent, waxed only 
to wane, this quiet reader of apparently disconnected 
thoughts upon intangible " transcendental " subjects held 
the platform and steadily exercised his gentle fascination 
over hearers of widely different temperaments and be- 
liefs.^ Most of his lectures were afterward reprinted 
as books,- which had some sale; but for many years he 
depended chiefly upon lecturing to eke out his limited 
income.^ After his first trip to Europe, his second mar- 
riage, and his settlement in Concord, his life flowed on 
for many years with a tranquillity befitting the serene 
philosopher. The deaths of his brothers Edward and 
Charles, in 1834 and 1836, deprived him of companions 
whose places were never filled again, although he was 

1 " It was with a feeling of predetermined dislike that I had the 
curiosity to look at Emerson at Lord Northampton's, a fortnight ago ; 
when, in an instant, all my dislike vanished. He has one of the most 
interesting countenances I ever beheld, — a combination of intelligence 
and sweetness that quite disarmed me." — Diary, etc., of H. C. Robinson, 
April 22, 1848. " I can do no better than tell what Harriet Martineau 
says about him : ' There is a vague nobleness and thorough sweetness 
about him which move people to their very depths, without their being 
able to explain why. . . . He conquers minds, as well as hearts, wher- 
ever he goes ; and, without convincing anybody's reason of any one 
thing, exalts their reason, and makes their minds worth more than they 
ever were before.' " — Ibid,, June 9, 1848. 

2 "A large number of his lectures," says Mr. Cabot, "remain un- 
published." 

3 " The Tucker estate [that of the family of his first wife] is so far 
settled," he writes in 1834, " that I am made sure of an income of about 
^1200." — Cabot, Vol. I., p. 218. " Pie writes ... in 1847 that the most 
he ever received was $570 for ten lectures; in Boston, ^50; in country 
lyceums, $10 and traveUing expenses." — Ibid., Vol. II., p. 460. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 199 

surrounded by dear friends all his life, and between him 
and Carlyle there was deep affection. In 1842 the death 
of his eldest child, a remarkable boy of five years, cut 
into his heart with pain against which no philosopher 
is proof or ought to be. But in the main his life was 
a singularly happy one. As the years went on, his fame 
steadily increased. As early as 1847, when he revisited 
England, he was recognized there as one of the most 
remarkable men of the century; and at home he was 
reverenced as a seer and saint, who dwelt habitually in 
the presence of the highest spiritual realities,^ 

Emerson's mind began to fail after the year 1870. 
He had always been deliberate in conversation, "pick- 
ing his way through his vocabulary to get at the best 
expression of his thoughts, as a well-dressed woman 
crosses the muddy pavement."^ In old age his 
memory for words became capricious, and often he 
was forced to describe objects instead of naming them 
• — as when he humorously said of an umbrella, "I can't 
tell its name, but I can tell its history : strangers take 
it away."^ The shock and exposure at the burning of 
his house hastened his decline, and he once more went 
abroad, for health and rest. On his return the love and 
pride of his fellow-townsmen appeared in the reception 
they gave him; he "was escorted, with music, between 
two rows of smiling school-children, to his house, where 
a triumphal arch of leaves and flowers had been 

1 Father Taylor, the Methodist preacher to sailors, who said of Emer- 
son that " he knows no more of the religion of the New Testament than 
Balaam's ass did of the principles of the Hebrew grammar " (Cabot, 
Vol. I., p. 328), yet declared that Emerson was more like Christ than 
any man he had known (O. W. Holmes's life of Emerson, p. 412). 

2 Holmes, p. 364. 3 Cabot, Vol. 11., p. 652. 



200 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

erected."^ By generous friends the house had been 
restored, with some improvements, to its former condi- 
tion. His renewed vigor was fleeting. His powers 
failed more and more, until, toward the end, he took 
childish delight in looking at pictures in books and 
showing them to guests. At Longfellow's funeral he 
said to a friend, "That gentleman was a sweet, beauti- 
ful soul, but I have entirely forgotten his name."^ A 
few weeks later this pathetic, but not painful, second- 
childhood of a high intellect was ended by death, after 
a brief illness free from suffering until near the very 
last. He was able to take farewell of his family and 
friends; and, his eyes falling upon a portrait of Carlyle, 
he murmured, "That is that man, my man." Not long 
after he fell asleep. 

Emerson's philosophy is the key to his prose writ- 
ings, large portions of which are merely amplifications 
or applications of a few fundamental ideas. He was an 
idealist. " Mind," he says, " is the only reality." ^ " I 
believe in the existence of the material world as the 
expression of the spiritual, or the real."^ Nature 
expresses not only the Infinite Mind, but the finite 
mind as well, since all mind is in essence the same. 
"The whole of nature is a metaphor of the human 
mind. The laws of moral nature answer to those of 
matter as face to face in a glass. "^ He even speaks of 

1 Cabot, Vol. II., p. 665. 2 Holmes, p. 346. 

3 The Transcendentalist. See also Nature, Chap. VI. 

^ Natural History of Intellect, 

fi Nature, Chap. IV. Cf. Wordsworth : — 

and how exquisitely, too — 
Theme this but Httle heard of among men — 
The external World is fitted to the Mind. 

— Preface to The Excursion, 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 201 

the universe as the "externization of thesouL"^ But 
this is because he does not sharply sever God from 
Man. "The currents of the Universal Being circulate 
through me; I am part or particle of God."^ "The 
soul in nian ... is not the intellect or the will, but 
. . . the background of our being, in which they lie, 
— an immensity not possessed and that cannot be pos- 
sessed."^ This view was the easier because Emerson 
thought of God as neither personal nor impersonal, but 
as the transcendent, indefinable Source of all modes of 
being.^ 

A.11 this but repeats the ideas of Carlyle, Coleridge, 
the German idealists, Plato, and the mystic thinkers of 
the Orient. Emerson was not an original philosopher. 
In the strict sense he was not a philosopher at all, for 
he relied upon intuition instead of reason, and was 
much more intent upon the moral and spiritual than 
upon the intellectual. Herein lay his unique value for 
his land and age. Taking almost for granted the lofty 
conceptions of idealism, this high spiritual nature put 
them to use in everyday life. He followed his own 
precept, "Hitch your wagon to a star." In the teeth 
of conventionalism, materialism, and scepticism he 
preached with singular incisiveness and charm the new- 
old doctrine of the Soul and its immediate relation to 
the Infinite Being. This first of truths dominates all 
his thinking. In the light of it nature takes on a 
higher beauty and a deeper significance. History and 
biography become fresh and vital with the indwelling 

1 The Poet, in Essays, Second Series. 

2 Nature, Chap. I. ^ xhe Over-Soul, in Essays, First Series, 
* See Nature, Chap. VII. ; Fate, in The Conduct of Life ; etc. 



202 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

life of God. Art ceases to be a matter of superficial 
form, but is seen as the artist's expression of the Eter- 
nal Beauty. For the individual life the doctrine is rich 
in guidance and inspiration. "Trust thyself; '^ God is 
in thee also. Pretence is vain; "character teaches over 
our head.'* Fret not; "the things that are really for 
thee gravitate to thee." Heaven and hell are within 
thee; "he who does a good deed is instantly ennobled, 
he who does a mean deed is by the action itself con- 
tracted." The highest greatness is internal and sim- 
ple; "give me health and a day, and I will make the 
pomp of emperors ridiculous." Upon social problems 
Emerson turned the searchlight of the same spiritual 
philosophy. In the Church the great defect, he thought, 
was that " men have come to speak of the revelation as 
somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were 
dead." He sympathized with the many reform move- 
ments of his day, but criticised them for depending too 
much upon outward means, too little upon love ; ^ and 
of Fourier's elaborate socialistic scheme he quietly re- 
marked that its originator "had skipped no fact but 
one, namely Life." The materialism of the American 
people, and their subservience to Europe in things of 
the higher life, he smote like an angel of light. " Per- 
haps the time is already come ... when the sluggard 
intellect of this continent will look from under its iron 
lids, and fill the postponed expectation of the world 
with something better than the exertions of mechanical 
skill." ^ "We have listened too long to the courtly 
muses of Europe. . . . We will walk on our own feet; 

1 See Man the Reformer ; Lecture on the Times ; and New England 
Reformers, in Essays, Second Series. 2 The American Scholar. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 203 

we will work with our own hands; we will speak our 
own minds." ^ 

But other and more personal qualities appear in 
Emerson's pages, and win him readers even among 
those wha perhaps do not sympathize with philosophic 
idealism or who find its iteration wearisome. Here 
and there poetic descriptions of nature gleam out with 
a fresh, serene beauty that never palls. A courageous 
candor in self-analysis sometimes smites the reader into 
wholesome shame. Again and again there is revealed 
an insight, as subtle as true, into the facts of man's 
spiritual being. A certain personal fastidiousness gives 
warning of a nature of extreme delicacy, and prepares 
us for those admirable words on behavior and manners 
which, but for the underlying spirituality, might have 
been uttered by Lord Chesterfield.'^ Curiously united 
with the qualities of seer and mystic, appear the 
shrewdness, humor, and keen observation of the Yankee. 
This ballast of hard common-sense the New England sage 
always took with him even in his most aerial voyagings, 
while in the admirable historical and political addresses, 
and in English Traits^ it forms the principal cargo. ^ 

Inspiring and keen as Emerson's mind was, it had 
certain limitations and defects which cannot be passed 
by in any careful estimate of his work. His instinct 
for the incisive and the startling, often lured him into 
extravagance of statement. He was not a learned man, 
and even his reading was desultory; consequently his 

1 The American Scholar. 

2 In this connection Emerson's lifelong liking for the courtly Beau- 
mont and Fletcher is significant. 

3 See particularly the Historical Discourse at Concord and Historic 
Notes of Life and Letters in New England, 



204 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

words on books, history, and systems of thought, al- 
though suggestive and stimulating, lack the authority of 
the scholar.^ Like Carlyle, he was constitutionally 
unable to do justice to the scientific habit of mind and 
its results. His philosophic idealism, together with 
extreme personal spirituality, led him to overrate Swe- 
denborg and to underrate Shakspere and the sensu« 
ous side of art in general. The same elements, modified 
by his humor and common-sense, determined his atti- 
tude toward Transcendentalism. It is difficult nowa- 
days, when we have passed into an atmosphere so 
different, to do this movement entire justice. Un- 
doubtedly Transcendentalism did good in its own day, 
especially as an offset to America's prevailing genius of 
the materialistic and practical. It broke with tradition, 
and opened the way for new ideas. It held up before 
the eyes of Young America high ideals of character, 
religion, philanthropy, social life, and national des- 
tiny. Indirectly it helped to lend soul to several 
practical reforms. But on its speculative side Trans- 
cendentalism was shallow and amateurish, and in prac- 
tice it tended to Utopianism. A few ideas hastily 
caught up at second hand from ancient and modern 
philosophy were the entire stock in trade of most of its 
disciples. Parties of ladies and gentlemen met in 
parlors to inflate their souls with the rarefied moonshine 
of which Mr. Alcott had such plenteous store. ^ It was 

1 " He would have been partly amused, partly vexed, to hear himself 
described as a profound student ... of anything to be learned from 
books." " He lived among his books and was never comfortable away 
from them, yet they did not much enter into his life." — Cabot, Vol. I., 
pp. 288, 292. 

2 In Historic Notes of Life and Letters in New England, Emerson 
tells, with evident relish, that on one such occasion, " at a knotty point 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 205 

a day for the blowing of soap-bubbles, beautifully iri- 
descent, with which as cannon-balls the grim strong- 
holds of error and wrong were to be battered down, 
preliminary to creating a new heaven and a new earth. 
Emerson's relations to Transcendentalism were peculiar. 
Although he was the soul and centre of the whole move- 
ment, he always maintained a somewhat critical attitude 
toward it, especially toward the fantastic, if harmless, 
eccentricities of theory and practice which capered 
around its circumference. His hopes might fly to Uto- 
pia, but his feet remained in Concord where were his 
house and his taxes. He never joined the Brook Farm 
community, nor showed much faith in its permanent 
success. Even in the case of the more practicable 
reforms connected with intemperance, the wrongs of 
women, and slavery, he maintained a philosophic calm 
and breadth of view, although speaking his mind on fit 
occasion with manly courage. And yet one feels that 
on the whole Emerson was too indulgent toward Trans- 
cendentalism and for a time too sanguine over its work 
in the world. Certainly he greatly overestimated Alcott. 
And he even made a mild attempt to bring in the 
Golden Age by having his servants eat at the same table 
with himself and his family — a plan which was promptly 
frustrated by the superior good sense of the domestics.^ 
More serious limitations for the general reader are Emer- 
son's too easy optimism and his defective sense of evil 
and sin. Both limitations sprang from the excess of 
idealism in his thinking and his nature. He had a 

in the discourse, a sympathizing Englishman with a squeaking voice 
interrupted with the question, ' Mr. Alcott, a lady near me desires to 
inquire whether omnipotence abnegates attribute ? ' " 
1 See Cabot, Vol. II., pp. 60-64. 



2o6 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

seraph's vision for "the ever-blessed One.'* But the 
many, the concrete, the actual, often very far from 
blessed, were not sufficiently real and present to him. 
The high serenity of his mood, the almost angelic 
purity of his nature, have of course their peculiar help- 
fulness and inspiration for us of grosser clay. But on 
the whole Emerson would draw us skyward more pow- 
erfully if he himself did not ascend quite so easily. If 
he had looked more steadily at life in its totality, we 
should feel more confidence in his idealistic interpreta- 
tion of it. If he had been more fully a man of like 
passions with ourselves, and yet had risen splendidly 
victorious over the world, the flesh, and the devil, he 
could then have helped us, not as angels help poor 
mortals, but as brother helpeth brother. 

Emerson's manner and style have great merit for the 
work to which he put them. He did not aim at a logi- 
cal and continuous development of thought. He desired 
rather to flash into the mind a few great ideas and then 
make brief, suggestive applications of them to character 
and life. For this purpose, short, pithy sentences were 
better adapted than sentences more complete in thought 
and of smoother flow; while logical coherence of sen- 
tence to sentence, and of paragraph to paragraph, was 
not essential, and perhaps not desirable, in writings in- 
tended chiefly to arouse and stimulate. The fact that 
these essays on abstract subjects were first designed as 
popular lectures, in which each paragraph and almost 
every sentence must contain something to hold the at- 
tention, also tended to the development of the parts at 
the expense of structure in the whole. It is probable, 
however, that Emerson's type of mind would in any 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 207 

event have produced results much the same. His mind 
was intuitive, not logical; and the thoughts which came 
to him were not links in a chain, but separate rays from 
a central sun.^ It is easy, however, to exaggerate the 
degree of incoherence in Emerson's writings. His first 
book. Nature^ is orderly enough in the parts and in the 
whole, being the most systematic and clearest exposition 
of his fundamental thought. The addresses, also, have 
sufficient method and a more fluent style. And even 
the essays, as some one has said, ''do not read back- 
ward." But Emerson's gift was in the word, the phrase, 
and the single sentence, not in the larger wholes. Mat- 
thew Arnold was certainly right in saying that Emerson 
was "not a great writer," that "his style has not the 
requisite wholeness of good tissue."^ But he could at 
least coin phrases that startle and pierce and carry high 
thoughts deep into heart and brain. 

It is both praise and blame of Emerson's poetry to 
say that it is much like his prose. The thought, par- 
ticularly in the philosophical poems, is often identical 
with that in the essays, and sometimes even the lan- 
guage is very similar.^ The nature poems show the 

1 " His practice was, when a sentence had taken shape, to write it out 
in his journal, and leave it to find its fellows afterward. These journals, 
paged and indexed, were the quarry from which he built his lectures 
and essays. When he had a paper to get ready, he took the material 
collected under the particular heading, and added whatever suggested 
itself at the moment." — Cabot, Vol. I., p. 294. 

2 Einerson, in Discourses in America. 

3 Compare Each and All with " Nothing is quite beautiful alone " 
{^Nature, Chap. III.) ; Brahfna, with " The act of seeing and the thing 
seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one " 
{The Over-Sozcl) ; Merlin with the essay The Poet ; Days with "They 
come and go like muffled and veiled figures; . . . they say nothing; and 
if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away " 



2o8 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

same keen observation of natural objects, and the same 
fresh delight in them, as appear in many prose pas- 
sages; and frequently they express or imply the ideal- 
istic philosophy of the relations of nature to God and 
man. In poems on the conduct of life, as Good-Bye, 
Forbearance, Days, and Terminus, are seen the same 
serenity, delicacy, and good sense as in the ethical and 
practical essays. The historical and political addresses 
have their poetical counterparts in the hymns and odes 
composed for various public occasions. In the poems 
as a whole there is also the same lack of passion, per- 
sonality, and structural unity — a lack far more serious 
in poetry than in prose. There is furthermore a marked 
deficiency of music and ease. Verse does not seem to 
have been a natural mode of expression for Emerson; 
even in that easiest of metres in which he habitually 
wrote, rhythm and rhyme were often secured only by 
awkward inversions and compressions. But occasion- 
ally, as in the Concord Hymn and Days, he wrote 
poems of admirable wholeness and unity, as fine in 
expression as in thought. And many of the poems less 
successful as wholes are strewn thick with individual 
lines and stanzas that reveal a remarkable gift in phrase- 
making. For sententiousness in verse Emerson has no 
equal among English-speaking poets of the nineteenth 
century.^ 

The fame and influence of the "sage of Concord" 
have suffered some diminution since his prime, but much 



( Works and Days) ; The Sphinx, The Problem, Wood-Notes, etc., with 
Emerson's philosophy of God, Nature, and Man. 

1 See particularly The Problem, The Rhodora, The Humble-Bee, The 
Snow-Storm, Threnody, Concord Hymn, and Voluntaries, 



MINOR TRANSCENDENTALISTS. 209 

yet remains and will remain. He was not one of the 
world's great intellects or great writers, but he was one 
of its great and high souls; in Matthew Arnold's phrase, 
" the friend and aider of those who would live in the 
spirit,"^ and as such he must be reckoned among the 
most powerful forces of the century. Because of his 
spiritual charm he has justly been likened to Cardinal 
Newman. But the immense difference between the two 
men at one point is really more significant. Newman's 
beautiful soul drew its nourishment from a faith based 
on authority and the Past; Emerson's rested on intui- 
tion in the Present. A judgment as to the intrinsic 
superiority of either type of faith would be out of place 
in these pages; but it may with propriety be said that 
the second is more in accord with the Time-Spirit, and 
therefore more helpful to many souls in this age of 
transition and doubt. In fact it is probably Emerson's 
greatest service to his country and his time that he 
demonstrated in his own person the possibility of com- 
bining the intellect of the rationalist with the spiritu- 
ality of the saint. ^ 

Amos Bronson Alcott (i 799-1888), a native of Con- 
necticut but long resident in or near Boston and Con- 
cord, was for many years prominent in Transcendental 
circles. He had the reputation of being a wonderful 
talker on philosophical themes, although his friends 
admitted that he could not adequately express himself 
in print. ^ Nowadays it is difficult wholly to escape the 



1 Emerson, in Discourses in America. 

2 See the last paragraph of Worship (in The Conduct of Li/e),iox 
Emerson's idea of the religion of the future. 

3 See Appendix, D, for the titles of his principal books. 

P 



210 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

suspicion that Mr. Alcott came perilously near being a 
charlatan in philosophy without knowing it. Sarah 
Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1810-1850) was for a time 
editor of The Dial, the short-lived organ of Transcen- 
dentalism; in 1846 she became the literary critic of 
The New York Tribune; two years later she went to 
Europe, where she married the Marquis Ossoli and 
devotedly nursed the wounded in the Italian revolution 
of 1849; together with her husband and child, she met 
death by shipwreck while returning to America. Her 
brilliant intellect and ardent temperament did not find 
full expression in her writings; ^ but she was a consider- 
able power in her day, and is still an interesting though 
somewhat pathetic figure in the history of American 
letters. Jones Very (1813-1880), an unordained Uni- 
tarian clergyman and one of Emerson's most valued 
friends, had in him an eccentric streak amounting al- 
most to insanity; but his Poems and Essays (1839) 
reveal an original and intensely spiritual nature, and 
an unusual gift of terse, fresh, direct expression within 
a limited field. 

The genius of Henry David Thoreau ^ was not pri- 

1 Woman in the Nineteenth Century, 1844 ; Papers on Literature 
and Art, 1846 ; Memoirs, 1851 ; etc. 

2 Life. Bom in Concord, Mass., July 12, 1817; of French descent 
on the paternal side; attended schools in Boston and Concord; in 
Harvard College, 1833-1837 ; taught school during his vacations, and 
in Concord Academy in 1838 ; at intervals assisted in his father's busi- 
ness of pencil-making; for many years a land surveyor; after his 
father's death, in 1857, carried on the pencil business for the benefit of 
his mother and sister; because of consumption went to Minnesota in 
1861 ; died in Concord, May 6, 1862. 

Works. A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers, 1849. 
Walden, 1854. Excursions, 1863. The Maine Woods, 1864. Cape 
Cod, 1865. Letters, 1865. A Yankee in Canada, 1866. Early Spring 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU. 2ir 

marily literary, yet he has a secure niche in American 
literature. Even in boyhood he showed a marked love 
of nature. At Harvard he was " far from distinguished 
as a scholar," and was thought to be "of an unsocial 
disposition."" ^ The year after his return to Concord, he 
refused, at the risk of imprisonment, to pay the church 
tax which was still levied by the parish. In this protest 
against the union of Church and State, made soon after 
he came under the personal influence of Emerson, may 
perhaps be seen an instance of the zeal of the disciple 
outrunning the discretion of the master. Thoreau was 
even accused of imitating Emerson's tone and manner. 
There is no doubt that he was profoundly influenced by 
the greater nature, but his personality and writings as 
a whole are certainly a very original kind of imitation. 
Henceforth Thoreau' s manner of life was extremely 
independent. He never married,^ and his own few 
and simple wants were easily supplied. His time was, 
therefore, largely free for that outdoor study of nature 
in which he most delighted, and for considerable liter- 
ary labor. His residence in a hut on the shore of 
Walden Pond, in 1845-1847, has often been misinter- 
preted and made too much of. It was only an episode 
in his life, and he never meant to preach by it that all 
men should live in huts or that civilization is a mis- 

in Massachusetts, 1881. Summer, 1884. Winter, 1887. Autumn, 
1892. Many magazine articles (in The Dial, Putna7ns Magazine, The 
Atlantic Monthly, etc.), containing a good deal of the subject-matter in 
the above volumes, appeared during Thoreau's lifetime. 

1 R. W, Emerson, by D. G. Haskins, as quoted in H. S. Salt's hfe of 
Thoreau, pp. 25, 26 (Great Writers Series). 

^ There is a story that Thoreau loved a Miss Sewall, but resigned his 
hopes in his brother's favor, the lady finally marrying another after ^1 
Thoreau's poem Sympathy is thought to refer to Miss Sewall. 



212 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

take. Rather it was a demonstration, first to himself 
and then to others, that man's happiness and higher 
life are not dependent upon luxuries nor even upon 
external refinements. Thoreau did believe that men 
would be the better for living more simply and closer 
to nature; but he was no cynic nor hermit. His seri- 
ous literary life began with his diary in 1837. His first 
poems were composed soon after. In 1838, and nearly 
every year afterward, he lectured in the Concord lyceum. 
To The Dial he contributed poems and essays, and from 
about the year 1849 he looked upon writing and lec- 
turing as his regular occupation. He was ardent in 
the anti-slavery cause, suffering imprisonment in the 
Concord jail for one night, in 1845, rather than pay 
taxes under a government that was waging the pro- 
slavery Mexican War; and his lecture on John Brown, 
delivered in Concord on October 30, 1859, and repeated 
in Boston five days later, before a large audience, is said 
to have been the first public utterance on behalf of that 
noble fanatic. Thoreau' s work was now almost done. A 
severe cold developed an inherited tendency to consump- 
tion, which could not be stayed by residence in Minne- 
sota; he returned to Concord only to die, his last words, 
characteristically enough, being " moose " and " Indian.'' 
Thoreau' s "whole figure," said one who knew him 
well, "had an active earnestness, as if he had no 
moment to waste." ^ He seldom used fiesh, wine, tea, 
or coffee. He desired, he said, to live "as tenderly 
and daintily as one would pluck a flower." ^ His senses 
were extraordinarily keen, and his entire nature was of 

1 Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist, by Ellery Channing, as quoted by 
Salt, pp. 86, 87. 2 Salt, p. 89. 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 213 

extreme delicacy and purity, even to vestal coldness. 
"I love Henry," said a friend, "but I cannot like him; 
and as for taking his arm, I should as soon think of 
taking the arm of an elm tree." ^ Yet he was capable of 
true and high friendship, and even the reserved and 
sensitive Hawthorne gladly spent many hours in his 
company. His writings cleave so closely to the man 
that they can hardly be studied wholly apart, nor is it 
necessary so to consider them at length here. What 
is most remarkable in them is their wild "tang," the 
subtlety and the penetrative quality of their imaginative 
sympathy with the things of field, forest, and stream. 
The minuteness, accuracy, and delicacy of the observa- 
tion and feeling are remarkable; while mysticism, fancy, 
poetic beauty, and a vein of shrewd humor often com- 
bine with the other qualities to make a whole whose 
effect is unique. Thoreau's verse is much like Emer- 
son's on a smaller scale and a lower plane, having the 
same technical faults and occasionally the same pierc- 
ing felicity of phrase. On the whole, Thoreau must be 
classed with the minor American authors; but there is 
no one just like him, and the flavor of his best work is 
exceedingly fine.^ 

Like so many other American authors, Nathaniel 
Hawthorne ^ was descended from the earliest settlers of 

1 Salt, p. 90. Cf. Thoreau's ideal of love and friendship, in Early 
Spring in Massachusetts. 

2 Excursions contains some of his finest works. See, particularly, 
Wild Apple's, Autumnal Tints, Walking, Night and Moonlight, and A 
Walk to Wachusett. 

3 Life. Born in Salem, Mass., July 4, 1804. Father died, 1808. 
Educated at an uncle's expense in private schools; by a tutor; and at 
Bowdoin College, 1821-1825. In Salem, writing stories for magazines, 
1825-1839, with excursions to the lakes, New Yc-k, Maine, etc. Editor 



214 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

New England. Major William Hawthorne came to 
Boston in 1630, and was long prominent in the colony 
as Indian fighter, persecutor of the Quakers, and speaker 
of the legislature. The novelist's grandfather and father 
were sea-captains, the former, ^*Bold Daniel" Haw- 
thorne, commanding a privateer during the Revolution- 
ary War. On his mother' s side Hawthorne was descended 
from the Mannings, who came to New England in 1676; 
they were a vigorous and long-lived race. With such 
ancestry it would be strange if the romancer had been 
the delicate, morbid being whom many readers sup- 
posed him to be; but he was far from that. His boy- 



of American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, 1836- 
1838. Engaged to Sophia A. Peabody, 1838. Weigher and gauger in 
Boston Custom House, 1839-1841. At Brook Farm, 1841. Married, 
1842 ; three children were born to him. In the Old Mailse, Concord, 
Mass., 1842-1846. Surveyor of Customs, Salem, i846-;i549. In Lenox, 
Mass., 1850-1851; in West Newton, Mass., 1851-1652; in Concord, 
having bought the "Wayside" House, 1852-1853. Consul at Liver- 
pool, 1853--1857. In Italy, 1858-1859. In England, 1859-1860. At the 
Wayside, 1860-1864. Died at Plymouth, N. H., May 18, 1864; buried 
at Concord. A Unitarian. 

Works. Fanshawe, 1828. Stories and articles (many afterward 
reprinted in Twice-Told Tales, etc.) in the magazines, 1831-1862. 
Twice-Told Tales, First Series, 1837 ; Second Series, 1842. Grand- 
father's Chair, 1841. Famous Old People (second part of Grandfather's 
Chair), 1841. Liberty Tree (third part of Grandfather's Chair), 1842. 
Biographical Stories for Children, 1842. Mosses from an Old Manse, 
1846. The Scarlet Letter, 1850. The House of the Seven Gables, 
1851. True Stories from History and Biography (Grandfather's Chair 
and Biographical Stories), 1851. A Wonder-Book, 1851. The Snow 
Image and Other Tales, 1851. The Blithedale Romance, 1852. Life of 
Franklin Pierce, 1852. Tanglewood Tales, being a second Wonder- 
Book, 1853. The Marble Faun (= The Transformation), i860. Our 
Old Home, 1863. The DoUiver Romance : first part, in The Atlantic 
Monthly, i^6^\ three parts, 1876. American Note-Books, 1868. English 
Note-Books, 1870. French and Italian Note-Books, 1872. Septimius 
Felton, 1872. Dr. Grimshawe's Secret, 1883. Hawthorne's First Diary 
[his son doubts its genuineness], 1897. 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 215 

hood was normal enough, except that his mother thought 
fit, as a young widow, to live a secluded life for many 
years. At college, so far from being a recluse, he was 
decidedly convivial, although his native fineness and 
balance ke-pt him from overstepping the boundary be- 
tween freedom and license. Physically he was an ath- 
letic Apollo.^ During the first period of his authorship, 
in Salem, he indeed lived the life of a hermit. " Foi 
months together," he says, "I scarcely held human 
intercourse outside of my own family, seldom going 
out except at twilight, or only to take the nearest way 
to the most convenient solitude."^ But he adds, 
" Once a year, or thereabouts, I used to make an excur- 
sion of a few weeks, in which I enjoyed as much of life 

1 " Within certain limits he was facile, easy-going, convivial ; but 
beyond these limits he was no more to be moved than the Rock of 
Gibraltar or the North Pole. He played cards, had ' wines ° in his 
room, and went off fishing and shooting with Bridge when the faculty 
thought he was at his books; but he . . . never defrauded the college 
government of any duty which he thought they had a right to claim 
from him." " He was five feet ten and a half inches in height, broad- 
shouldered, but of a hght, athletic build, not weighing more than one 
hundred and fifty pounds. His limbs were beautifully formed, and the 
moulding of his neck and throat was as fine as anything in antique 
sculpture. His hair, which had a long, curving wave in it, approached 
blackness in color; his head was large and grandly developed; his 
eyebrows were dark and heavy, with a superb arch and space beneath. 
His nose was straight, but the contour of his chin was Roman. . . . 
His eyes were large, dark blue, brilliant, and full of varied expression. 
Bayard Taylor used to say that they were the only eyes he had ever 
known flash fire. . . . His complexion was delicate and transparent, 
rather dark than light, with a ruddy tinge in the cheeks. . . . His 
hands were large and muscular. . . . Up to the time he was forty years 
old, he could clear a height of five feet at a standing jump. His voice, 
which was low and deep in ordinary conversation, had astounding 
volume when he chose to give full vent to it; . . . it was not a bellow, 
but had the searching and electrifying quality of the blast of a trumpet." 
"^Hawthorne and his Wife, by Julian Hawthorne, Vol. I., pp. 120, 121. 

2 Hawthorne and His Wife, Vol. I., pp. 96, 97. 



2i6 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

as other people do in the whole year's round." And 
this solitude, peopled by the creations of his own im- 
agination, was probably best for him at that stage of his 
development. He at least believed so.-^ 

But he was at last drawn out of it. His first stories 
appeared in the magazines anonymously;^ but after the 
publication of Twice-Told Tales, *^ I was compelled," he 
says, "to come out of my owl's nest and lionize in a 
small way." Soon afterward he met the noble woman 
who became his wife, and henceforth solitude of the 
harmful sort was impossible for him; his married life 
was ideal. ^ There was in Hawthorne, however, an 
undoubted tendency to excessive seclusion from the 
everyday world. He himself recognized the tendency 
and sought to counteract it by engaging in practical 
work from time to time. " I want to have something 
to do with this material world," he said, shortly before 
entering the Boston Custom House. ^ In all his official 
positions he was an excellent administrator, and when 
occasion demanded he displayed a vigor which showed 
that he could have walked the quarter-deck as masterfully 



1 " Living in solitude till the fulness of time was come, I still kept the 
dew of my youth and the freshness of my heart." " My long seclusion 
had not made me melancholy or misanthropic; . . . and perhaps it was 
the kind of discipline which my idiosyncrasy demanded, and chance 
and my own instincts, operating together, had caused me to do what 
was fittest." — Hawthorne and his Wife, Vol. I., pp. 92, 98. 

2 The Token, The New England Magazine, The Knickerbocker, and 
other periodicals were glad to get his tales. For the early stories he 
received ^35 apiece. 

3 " Thou art the only person in the world that ever was necessary to 
me. ... I think I was always more at ease alone than in anybody's 
company till I knew thee. And now I am only myself when thou art 
within my reach." — Letter to his wife, July 5, 1848. 

* See also the introduction to The Scarlet Letter, 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 217 

as any of his seafaring ancestors.^ Perhaps the same 
instinct urged him to enter the Brook Farm community 
and engage for a few months in manual labor in the 
open air. But his healthy scepticism as to the more 
soaring aspects of the scheme appears from the first 
in his references to Margaret Fuller's '^Transcendental 
heifer" that "hooks the other cows"; and before long 
he realized that he was altogether out of his element.'-^ 
During his residence in Concord, Hawthorne came to 
enjoy the companionship of Thoreau, Emerson, Mar- 
garet Fuller, Ellery Channing, and other literati, al- 
though he never had any special liking for "literary 
persons." He liked to associate with men of all sorts; 
he studied them keenly, almost coldly, and his nature 
was so large and his imagination so mobile that he 
could adapt himself to widely different persons, reveal- 
ing to each so much of himself as each could appreciate 
— and no more.^ Hawthorne's residence in England 

^ •' Placid, peaceful, calm, and retiring as he was in all the ordinary 
events of life, he was tempestuous and irresistible when roused. An 
attempt on the part of a rough and overbearing sea-captain to interfere 
with his business as an inspector of customs [at Salem] . . . was met 
with such a terrific uprising of spiritual and physical wrath that the 
dismayed captain fled up the wharf and took refuge in the office, inquir- 
ing, ' What in God's name have you sent on board my ship as an 
inspector? ' I have known no man more impressive, none in whom the 
great reposing strength seemed clad in such a robe of sweetness." — 
Letter by G. B. Loring, in Conway's life of Hawthorne, p. 106. 

2 " Is it a praiseworthy matter that I have spent five golden months 
in providing food for cows and horses? It is not so." — American 
Note-Books, August 12, 1841. 

3 " Thus, if he chatted with a group of rude sea-captains in the 
smoking-room of Mrs. Blodgett's boarding-house, or joined a knot of 
boon companions in a Boston bar-room, or talked metaphysics with 
Herman Melville on the hills of Berkshire, he would aim to appear in 
each instance a man hke they were." — Haivthorne and his Wife, Vol. 
I., pp. 88, 89. 



2i8 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

did not do much for him as a man or an artist. Unfor- 
tunately he shared the lingering anti-English prejudice 
of many of his countrymen, and he met very few of the 
greatest men of letters. Thackeray, Dickens, " George 
Eliot," Tennyson, Carlyle, Mill, and most of the other 
persons who, as Mr. Conway has said, "might have 
made his sojourn a cosmopolitan education," remained 
strangers to him. In Italy he fared better, drinking in 
eagerly the beauty of her nature and her art, and asso- 
ciating freely with eminent artists. But his race was 
now almost run. Soon after his return to America his 
superb health began to fail; there was no specific dis- 
ease, but a general decline. His last literary tasks fell 
from his hands unfinished. He sought new strength 
in a journey through northern New England, in com- 
pany with his college friend, ex-President Pierce; but 
it was soon ended by his entrance upon a longer jour- 
ney, whence there is no returning. At the inn, where 
they had stopped for the night, Hawthorne quietly 
passed away in sleep. 

"He is so simple, so transparent, so just, so tender, 
so magnanimous," wrote his wife, "that my highest 
instinct could only correspond with his will. I never 
knew such delicacy of nature. . . . Was ever such a 
union of power and gentleness, softness and spirit, pas- 
sion and reason? . . . My dearest Love waits upon 
God like a child." ^ His relations with his children 
were as charming as one would expect them to be, 
which is saying much. He was their companion — play- 
ful, imaginative, just, indulgent without weakness. Haw- 
thorne was always shy in general society, although less so 

1 Hawthorne and his Wife, Vol. L, p. 273. 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 219 

In his last years. But "with a single companion his 
talk flowed on sensibly, and quietly, and full of wisdom 
and shrewdness; he discussed books with wonderful 
acuteness, sometimes with startling power; he analyzed 
men, their characters, and motives, and capacity, with 
great penetration."^ His best season for composition 
was the winter, and his best part of the day the morn- 
ing; when once fairly started he worked very regularly. 
While lost in thought he sometimes did things dreadful 
to the mind of the well-regulated housekeeper, wiping 
his pen upon the lining of his lovely dressing-gown, 
cutting up the sleeve of a new shirt with the scissors, 
and whittling completely away one of the leaves of his 
writing-table. But these are the privileges of genius. 

Hawthorne's Life of Franklin Pierce j the price paid 
for a consulship and residence abroad, shows at least the 
practical side of this dreamy romancer and his loyalty to 
an old college friend. Children, young and old, cannot 
regret that in Grandfather' s Chair, Biographical Stories, 
A Wonder Book, Tanglewood Tales, etc., he turned aside 
from pure fiction to lend his charm of style and fancy to 
the illumination of history and myth. Our Old Home 
is biased and inadequate as a description of the English 
people; but it does tell some truths that perhaps needed 
to be told, and we know Hawthorne the better for it, 
especially his limitations and a certain trenchant inde- 
pendence. The Note-Books, besides having many pas- 
sages of intrinsic interest, are windows through which 
one may look into the life of the man and the artist. 

Twice-Told Tales and Mosses fro77i an Old Manse , 
although they did not bring him wide fame, contain some 

1 G. B. Loring, quoted in Conway's life of Hawthorne, p. 107, 



220 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

of Hawthorne's most characteristic work. In beauty of 
style, in delicate fancy playing on the borderland of the 
natural and the supernatural, in sombre imagination, 
and in wedding of the moral to the spectral, he never 
did anything essentially better, page for page, than 
"The Snow-Image," "Lady Eleanore's Mantle," "Young 
Goodman Brown," and many other of these pieces, 
among which every reader has his own favorites. Some 
of them are comparatively crude, manifestly the work 
of an apprentice hand; and still others, as "The Min- 
ister's Black Veil" and "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment," 
have, as preliminary studies for the romances, an inter- 
est which they would not otherwise possess. Certain 
phases of Hawthorne's mind, however, are better illus- 
trated here than in the longer works. His kindly, 
broad-souled, fine-tempered interest in humanity appears 
more explicitly, at least, in such sketches as "A Rill 
from the Town Pump," "Sunday at Home," and "The 
Procession of Life." His satiric powers, also, are given 
freer rein. In "Mrs. Bullfrog" the satire is broad and 
comparatively commonplace; in "The Celestial Rail- 
road" it enters the world of current religion; in 
"Feathertop" it is imaginatively combined with the 
uncanny and the grotesquely pathetic. In "Buds and 
Bird-Voices" and in "The Old Manse" one sees at 
their best the poet-novelist's minute knowledge and deli- 
cately luxurious love of nature, with exquisite interplay 
of fancy, tenderness, and humor. 

Hawthorne's youthful romance, Fanshawe, was a fail- 
ure. In wholeness and depth of impression The Scarlet 
Letter, the first of the successful romances, is also the 
best; as a picture of the inner life of the New England 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 221 

Puritans, together with a study of the effects of sin upon 
the soul, it stands quite alone in American literature 
for truth, depth, and subtlety. The House of the Seven 
Gables is slighter and more playful, the most domestic 
of Hawthorne's novels, and for that reason has a pecul- 
iarly gentle charm. The Blithe dale Romance was not 
intended to be a truthful picture of the Brook Farm 
community, although it was manifestly suggested by 
that Transcendental Utopia ; and its purely imaginative 
value is slight. The Marble Faun^ Hawthorne's second 
great creation, showed, however, that his spiritual eye 
was not yet dimmed nor his imaginative force abated; 
in unity, intensity, and tragic power it is inferior to The 
'Scarlet Letter, but it is superior in sweep of thought and 
in ideal beauty. Of the posthumous romances, Sep- 
timiiis Felto7i and The Dolliver Romance seem to indi- 
cate some falling off in imaginative power, even after 
allowance is made for their unfinished state. Doctor 
Grimshawe's Secret, in the form in which we have it, is 
unsuccessful in its attempt to combine scenes in the 
New World with scenes in the Old, and the latter are 
marred by much irrelevant discussion of the character- 
istics of England; yet the portrayal of the grim old 
doctor and the description of the secret chamber are 
unsurpassed by anything in Hawthorne's pages, and 
bring a keen realization of the loss which American lit- 
erature sustained in the premature death of its chief 
magician. 

In the introduction to The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne 
has, with charming self -mockery, imagined his grim 
ancestor's scorn for him as a "writer of story-books"; 
he was, nevertheless, as deeply moral and spiritual as 



222 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

the noblest of the Puritans, as profoundly interested in 
the problems of sin, the soul, and the supernatural. But 
he was an artist, approaching moral and spiritual realities 
from the side of the imagination. He did not think in 
sermons but in pictures. He taught no catechism, 
formulated no creed or philosophy : instead, he looked 
into Roger Chillingworth's soul and saw slow revenge 
doing its hideous work there, like a cancer; he beheld 
Donatello startled by impulsive crime into a higher life; 
he created Hilda, that spiritual lily, whose very exist- 
ence is an argument for God and immortality and to 
whom the stain even of another's sin is agony. 

As an artist Hawthorne belongs with the idealists; 
and the phase of the ideal which most fascinated him 
was the supernatural.-^ For an American novelist of 
this type the range of themes was very limited. It was 
almost inevitable that Hawthorne should turn to the 
early history of the colonies, around which time had 
already thrown some halo of romance; to the gloomy 
superstition of witchcraft, whose most terrible memories 
were connected with his native village; and to the allied 
arts of alchemy and magic pharmacy, the pursuit of 
which could easily be transferred to the shores of the 
New World. Even in handling more modern and 
realistic material, in The House of the Seven Gables, he 
paints in a background of witchcraft, ancestral wrong, 
and hereditary curse. The Blithedale Romance is a 
comparative failure for the lack of such a background. 

1 The influence of heredity may be traced pretty plainly here. Haw- 
thorne's sea-faring ancestors doubtless shared the superstitious tenden- 
cies of their class ; and the ghosts of the witches who were so vigorously 
persecuted by the second of his line in America evidently returned to 
haunt the descendant of their tormentor. 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 223 

In The Marble Faun the romancer escapes from the 
realm of the Christian supernatural only to take refuge 
in the pagan and in the world of Italian art. The 
posthumous works return, for the most part, to the 
regions of magic and mystery. Hawthorne had also, 
however, a keen eye for the facts of the external world. 
The American Note-Books reveal an almost microscopic 
observation of nature; the description of the finding of 
Zenobia's body, in The Blithedale Romance , is painfully 
realistic; ^ many of the descriptions in The Marble Faun 
are transferred, with only trifling changes, from the 
Italian Note-Books ; and the introduction to The Scarlet 
Letter shows how shrewdly this spinner of gossamer fan- 
cies read the character of his prosaic associates in the 
Salem custom-house.^ 

This vivid sense of two worlds, working with his 
poetic instinct to express the spiritual by the material, 
the inner by the outer, resulted in one conspicuous 
feature of Hawthorne's method, that symbolism in which 
his tales and novels abound and by which he produces 
some of his most magical effects. The scarlet letter, 
the old house of the seven gables, the flower in Zenobia's 
hair, Hilda's doves. Doctor Grimshawe's monstrous 
spider, with many other symbolic objects and incidents, 
will occur to every one; and the reader attentive to this 
point knows into what minutiae the symbolism is some- 
times carried. In places, indeed, and in the total 
effect, it only just avoids the forced and the unnatural; 

1 It is based upon fact; see Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife, 
Vol. I., P- 296. 

2 See also the many lifelike and even homely details in The House of 
the Seven Gables, particularly the portrait of Uncle Venner and the talk 
of the working-men about the vicissitudes of cent-shops. 



224 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

but it does avoid them, owing to a delicate and sugges- 
tive manner and to the fanciful, ideal tone of the 
romances as wholes, which allows of the introduction of 
more symbolism than would be permissible in realistic 
novels.^ Another phase of Hawthorne's method may, 
perhaps, be traced in part to the same source. Again 
and again he opposes to each other two characters which 
in one way or another represent the two sides of realitye 
Hester and Dimmesdale are both sinful; but the former's 
nature is the more earthly, although the stronger and 
richer; the latter' s is the more spiritual. Judge 
Pyncheon, gross and practical, is set over against the 
aesthetically exquisite Clifford. The florid luxuriance 
of Zenobia's being is contrasted with the pallid ethereal- 
ness of Priscilla's. Miriam and Hilda present a similar 
contrast, although the latter, combining delicacy with 
great spiritual power, is a much higher conception than 
the negative Priscilla. Colcord is of the same type as 
Clifford, only moral instead of aesthetic, his frail and 
gentle figure standing out in lines of air and light against 
the black, burly form of Doctor Grimshawe, in whom 
good and evil struggle together, each a shaggy Titan. 
This constant opposition of characters must, however, 
have been due, in part, to a merely artistic sense of the 
value of contrast and variety. Hence came also, no 
doubt, Hawthorne's practice of relieving the gloom by 
characters such as Phoebe, who is like a ray of sunshine 
let into the dark old house of the seven gables, or by 



1 In giving the lightning the shape of the scarlet letter, Hawthorne 
has perhaps exceeded the limits even for a fanciful romance. One 
wishes, at least, that he had allowed no one but the conscience-strickeR 
Dimmesdale to detect the resemblance. 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 225 

young children, as in The Scarlet Letter, The Dolliver 
Romance, and Doctor Grimshawe's Secret, where their 
froUc life and flower-like beauty soften yet heighten the 
effects of age and guilt. 

Hawthorne''s art, in other ways also, is of very high 
quality. An English critic not given to overpraise says, 
" It is impossible to speak too highly of Hawthorne's 
style." ^ Its purity, delicate precision, and poetic beauty 
of sound and movement are not only a rare pleasure in 
themselves, but peculiarly effective, and indeed neces- 
sary, in romances so imaginative and ideal. Hawthorne's 
plots, except in The Scarlet Letter, are deficient in 
coherence and climax; yet all contain thrilling situa- 
tions, and serve well their main purpose of furnishing a 
narrative framework for the study of the characters and 
"the thoughtful moral." ^ His handling of the magical 
and the supernatural is wonderfully artful. Writing for 
a practical and even sceptical generation, in a country 
where, as he himself said, there was nothing but **a 
commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple day- 
light," ^ he yet gains our imaginative credence for witch- 
craft, the elixir of life, and divers other superannuated 
marvels. The inner secrets of this verbal wizardry lie 
below the plummet of analysis, deep in the very centre 
of the magician's gift of imagination and expression; 
but some of the means lie nearer the surface. In one 
way or another a more or less remote, mystical, or 
poetical background is usually secured, either in early 

1 John Nichol, in his American Literahire, p. 329. 

2 Hawthorne's description of The Marble Faun (in the Preface) as 
" a fanciful story, evolving a thoughtful moral," applies nearly as well to 
any of his romances. 3 Preface to The Marble Faun. 

Q 



226 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

colonial times, or, in one instance, in romantic Italy, 
which the author himself says^'was chiefly valuable to 
him as affording a sort of poetic or fairy precinct, where 
actualities would not be so terribly insisted upon.'*^ 
Again, with or without such a background, we are led 
up to the marvel by a series of gentle steps : first a mere 
rumor, fancy, or half -mocking jest; then, it may be, 
some slight confirmatory piece of evidence, laughingly 
withdrawn before it can be closely examined; next, a 
sly advance under cover of the very scepticism by which 
our reason has just been reassured; until finally we find 
ourselves, we hardly know how, face to face with the 
monster, who now seems not so very strange after all.^ 
In its broad relations, Hawthorne's work is a part of the 
Romantic movement in modern literature, having close 
affinities with and some indebtedness to the European 
fiction of mystery and terror, to the poetry of Blake, 
Coleridge, and Shelley, and to the writings of his coun- 
trymen, Brown and Poe. But he is also original and 
unique. He alone made the utmost of the scant mate- 
rials furnished by New England life for the romance of 
magic and the supernatural; and he has no equal in 
combining these forms of the imaginative with the moral 
and spiritual. Poe's tales have at their best a brilliant 
intensity which one nowhere finds in Hawthorne. But 
the latter is greatly superior in evenness of workmanship, 
in constructive power on a large scale, in range of sub- 

1 Preface to The Marble Faun. 

2 See The Snow Image for one of the most skilful of these graduated 
transitions : children playing in the snow at one end of the process ; a 
snow-maiden running around in the dusky garden, at the other end ; 
and no perceptible shock or jar where the natural glides into the preter- 
natural. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 27.y 

jects, in knowledge of human nature and ability to de- 
lineate character, in moral and spiritual elevation, and 
in sanity of soul. For, in spite of his tendency to 
uncanny subjects, Hawthorne was healthy in mind as in 
body. It is a superficial and commonplace view which 
sees a morbid nature in the creator of Phoebe and 
Kenyon and Hilda and the children who dance through 
Hawthorne's pages like incarnations of health and sun- 
shine. If at other times he walks in dark and strange 
places, it is not with the hectic feverishness of Hoff- 
mann nor the morbid gloom of Poe, but with the noble 
curiosity of an imaginative and spiritual nature, as sane 
as it is exquisitely sensitive, peering into deep, dim 
mysteries, speculating boldly upon high problems, yet 
maintaining always a hold upon the normal and a whole- 
some moral balance. Hawthorne knew well enough his 
own limitations — the limitations of idealism.^ But 
within his range he was one of the finest natures that 
have manifested themselves in letters, the greatest artist 
in American literature, and among the few great literary 
artists of his century. 

John Greenleaf Whittier's^ earliest ancestor in 

1 " The page of life that was spread out before me [in the Salem 
custom-house] seemed dull and commonplace only because I had not 
fathomed its deeper import. A better book than I shall ever write was 
there." — Introduction to The Scarlet Letter. 

2 Life. Born in Haverhill, Mass., Dec. 17, 1807. Attended district 
school; in Haverhill Academy, 1827-1828 ; taught school in winter of 
1827-1828. Edited The American Manufacturer, Boston, 1828-1829; 
The Gazette, Haverhill, 1830; The New England Review, Hartford, 
1830-1831 ; appointed delegate to the Whig national convention, 1831. 
Lived on his Haverhill farm, 1832-1836; delegate to Anti-Slavery na- 
tional convention, 1833 ; mobbed in Concord, N. H., by anti-abolition- 
ists, 1835 ; representative from Haverhill in Massachusetts legislature, 
1835. Removed to Amesbury, Mass., 1836. Edited The Gazette. Haver* 



228 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

America was Thomas Whittier, an Englishman, supposed 
to be of Huguenot descent, who settled in what is now 
Amesbury, Mass., in 1638, removing nine years later to 
Haverhill. His youngest son married a Quakeress; 
and their descendants, of whom the poet was one, were 



hill, 1836. A secretary, in New York, of the Anti-Slavery Society, 1837. 
Edited The National Enquirer (in 1838 it became The Pennsylvania Free- 
man^, 1837-1840. Lived chiefly at Amesbury, 1840-1892. Edited The 
Middlesex Standard, Lowell, 1844; virtually edited The Essex Tran- 
script, Amesbury, 1844-1846 ; corresponding editor of The National 
j5r (2, Washington, 1847-1860; assisted in starting The Atlantic Monthly, 
1857. Elected an overseer of Harvard College, 1858 ; received from 
Harvard the degree of LL.D., 1866 ; elected a trustee of Brown Uni- 
versity, 1869. Died at Hampton Falls, N. H., Sept. 7, 1892; buried at 
Amesbury. A Quaker. 

Works. Legends of New England, 1831. Moll Pitcher, 1832. 
Justice and Expediency; or. Slavery considered with a View tg its 
Rightful and Effectual Remedy, Abolition, 1833. Mogg Megone, 1836. 
Poems written during the Progress of the Abolition Question, 1837. 
Poems, 1838. Moll Pitcher, and the Minstrel Girl (revised edition), 
1840. Lays of my Home and other Poems, 1843. Miscellaneous 
Poems, 1844. The Stranger in Lowell, 1845. Voices of Freedom 
(fourth edition), 1846. The Supernaturalism of New England, 1847. 
Poems, 1849. Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal in the Province 
of Massachusetts Bay (1678-1679), 1849. Political Works (London), 
1850. Songs of Labor, and Other Poems, 1850. Old Portraits and 
Modern Sketches, 1850. Little Eva, 1852. The Chapel of the Her- 
mits, and Other Poems, 1853. A Sabbath Scene, 1853. Literary Rec- 
reations and Miscellanies, 1854. The Panorama, and Other Poems, 
1856. Political Works, 1857. The Sycamores, 1857. Home Ballads 
and Poems, i860. In War Time, and Other Poems, 1863. National 
Lyrics, 1865. Snow-Bound, 1866. Prose Works, 1866. Maud Muller, 
1867; appeared first in The National Era, 1854. The Tent on the 
Beach, and Other Poems, 1867. Among the Hills, and Other Poems, 
1867. Ballads of New England, 1870. Miriam and Other Poems, 1871. 
The Pennsylvania Pilgrim, and Other Poems, 1872. Mabel Martin, and 
Other Poems, 1874. Hazel Blossoms, 1875. The Vision of Echard, and 
Other Poems, 1878. The King's Missive, and Other Poems, 1881. The 
Bay of Seven Islands, and Other Poems, 1883. Poems of Nature, 1886. 
Saint Gregory's Guess, and Recent Poems, 1886. At Sundown (pri- 
vately printed) , 1890 ; with a few additional poems, 1892. Very many 
of Whittier's poems appeared first in newspapers and magazines. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 229 

nearly all Friends. Whittier's mother was descended 
from Rev.. Stephen Bachiler, a clergyman of the Eng- 
lish Church, who became a non-conformist and finally 
removed to Massachusetts in 1632; he was a remarkable 
man; "it was the Bachiler eye, dark, deep-set, lustrous, 
which marked the cousinship that existed between 
Daniel Webster and John Greenleaf Whittier."^ The 
latter was born in the house built by Thomas Whittier in 
1688 and occupied ever since by his descendants. The 
old homestead, where the poet spent his early years, was 
a typical New England farm, having " low green mead- 
ows, picturesque with wooded islands " ; ^ upland pastures, 
with ^ the huckleberry bushes and old gray rocks so dear 
to the memory of every New Englander; and "a small 
brook, noisy enough as it foamed, rippled, and laughed 
down its rocky falls. "^ He thus came naturally by his 
distinction as the poet of rural New England. New 
England was born in his blood, breathed in with every 
breath of his childhood and youth. ^ His health being 
delicate, only the lighter kinds of farm work were re- 
quired of him, and he had the more time for indulging 
his strong taste for books. The thirty odd volumes in 
his home were read and re-read. When he was but a 
lad of fourteen, the loan of Burns' s poems set the Ameri- 
can Burns to writing verses too.^ About the same time 

1 Pickard's life of Whittier, Vol. I., p. 12. 

2 Whittier, in The Fish I didnt Catch, 

3 From his uncle Moses, a man " wise in the traditions of the family 
and neighborhood," he heard, " as they worked together in the fields, 
or sat by the evening fireside, . . . marvelous stories of the denizens of 
the forest and stream, traditions of witchcraft, and tales of strange hap- 
penings." — Pickard, Vol. I., p. 32. 

4 " It is a tradition that his first verses were written upon the beam of 
his mother's loom." " His schoolmates say he was in the habit of 



230 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

he bought Shakspere's plays, and a Waverley novel fell 
into his hands, the latter being read in secret for fear 
that his parents would disapprove. Whittier's father, the 
practical, laconic man portrayed in Snow-Bound, dis- 
couraged his literary tendencies, but his mother secretly 
rejoiced over them, and his sister Mary openly encour- 
aged them. The sending of some of his poems to 
Garrison's Newburyport newspaper. The Free Press, ^ 
led the editor to ride over to Haverhill to see the young 
poet, whom he urged to pursue his studies farther. To 
earn money for a half-year's expenses at the academy, 
Whittier worked all winter making slippers.^ With 
another half-year at the academy his scholastic training 
ended. But, as his biographer says, this "was only the 
beginning of his student life; by wide and well-chosen 
reading he was constantly adding to his stores of in- 
formation; while revelling in the fields of English lit- 
erature, he became familiar through translations with 
ancient and current literature of other nations, and kept 
abreast of all political and reformatory movements."^ 
He was a lover of books, and from the study in the 
house at Amesbury his "constantly increasing library 
. . . overflowed into nearly all the rooms. "^ 

covering his slate with rhymes, which were passed about from desk to 
desk." — Pickard, Vol. I., pp. 45, 46. 

^ The first of Whittier's poems which appeared in it, in 1826, was 
sent secretly by this admirable sister Mary. " The paper came to him 
when he was . . . mending a stone wall by the roadside. . . . His heart 
stood still a moment when he saw his own verses. . . . He has said he 
was sure that he did not read a word of the poem all the time he looked 
at it." — Pickard, Vol. I., pp. 50, 51. 

2 " He received but eight cents a pair for his work. . . . He calcu- 
lated so closely every item of expense that he knew before the begin- 
ning of the term that he would have twenty-five cents to spare at its 
close, and he actually had." — Pickard, Vol. I., p. 54. 

3 Pickard, Vol. I., p. 72. ^ ibid.. Vol. I., p. 160. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 231 

It has been generally forgotten or unknown that during 
the first few years of his manhood, although his interest 
in literature was deep and persistent, and hardly 
a week passed without the publication of a new 
poem, Whittier was chiefly occupied with politics and 
had strong political ambition. He edited very ably 
several party newspapers,^ and he early discovered 
much skill as a practical politician. His frail health 
greatly hampered him, but what took him permanently 
out of the race for political honors was his espousal 
of the anti-slavery cause. He made the sacrifice 
deliberately, after a careful study of the whole ques- 
tion, and without the shallow optimism which allowed 
many abolitionists to expect speedy success. He 
became the poet of the anti-slavery cause. But he also 
aided it in many other ways, participating in party con- 
ventions, giving wise counsel to the more conspicuous 
leaders, and doing a vast amount of effective editorial 
work through many gloomy years, ^ Although the 
Quaker poet's inherited abhorrence of slavery w^as in- 

1 The New England Review was the leading Whig organ in Con- 
necticut. 

2 " He took men as he found them, encouraged them to go part way 
with him. * Has thee found many saints or angels in thy dealings with 
either political party ? Do not expect too much of human nature.' He 
had a genius for coaUtions, and could accept assistance from unfriendly 
sources. . . . He contributed [largely] to the election of Charles Sum- 
ner to the United States Senate, by holding the anti-slavery vote to a 
coalition distasteful to many of his followers, which gave to pro-slavery 
Democrats the governorship of Massachusetts and the principal state 
offices. . . . His was a familiar form in the lobby of the State House 
for many years. He was a shrewd judge of men, knew how to touch 
their weak points, and scrupled not to reach their consciences along the 
line of least resistance. . . . His keen sense of the ridiculous kept him 
from being in the least degree ' cranky ' in his philanthropy." — Pickard, 
Vol. I., pp. 188, 189, 191. 



232 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

tense, his quarrel was with the system, not with indi- 
viduals; "all his life he numbered among his personal 
friends, not only apologists for slavery, but slaveholders 
themselves.'*^ His labors on behalf of liberty taxed 
his feeble strength, and left little leisure or energy for 
purely literary work until near the end of the great con- 
test. Most of the time he lived quietly upon his little 
estate at Amesbury, enjoying the friendship of many 
distinguished men, and deeply happy for many years in 
the companionship of his mother and his favorite sister 
Elizabeth.^ In the last third of his life the sale of his 
poems banished all pecuniary care,^ and the saintly old 
man made his prolonged descent into the vale of years 
in perfect peace. The celebration on his seventieth 
birthday, and again on his eightieth, eloquently testified 
how highly his countrymen esteemed the man and the 
poet. But, in spite of all, his solitude was deep. 
"Almost painful," wrote Elizabeth Phelps Ward, "is 
the picture which my heart carries of his patient and 

1 Pickard, Vol. II., p. 502. 

2 His mother died in 1857 ; his sister, in 1864. When asked why he 
had never married, he wrote: "Circumstances — the care of an aged 
mother, and the duty owed to a sister in delicate health for many years 
— must be my excuse for living the lonely life which has called out thy 

pity I know there has something very sweet and beautiful been missed, 

but I have no reason to complain." — Pickard, Vol. I., pp. 276, 277. 
Mr. Pickard says (p. 276) : *' The poem \^Me7nories\ was written in 
1841, and although the romance it embalms lies far back of this date, 
possibly there is a heart still beating which fully understands its mean- 
ing. The biographer can do no more than make this suggestion, which 
has the sanction of the poet's explicit word." He hints that the love 
*' had been sacrificed to adverse circumstances." 

3 Whittier got $10,000 from the sale of the first edition of Snow- 
Bound. Of The Tent 07i the Beach 20,000 copies were sold at the rate 
of about 1000 daily ; the poet thereupon wrote to his publisher, with 
characteristic modesty and humor, *' This will never do; the swindle is 
awful ; Barnum is a saint to us." — Pickard, Vol. H., p. 512. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 233 

cheerful but heavy loneliness. . . . He seemed to 
me, beloved, nay, adored, as he was, and affectionately 
cared for, one of the loneliest men I ever knew."^ 
From year to year he grew feebler. At last came a 
shock of, paralysis, and he died peacefully in sleep. 

"He was a very handsome, distinguished-looking 
young man,'* wrote a lifelong friend. "He was tall, 
slight, and very erect; a bashful youth, but never 
awkward. . . . With intimate friends he talked a great 
deal, and in a wonderfully interesting manner. . . . 
He had a great deal of wit . . . and a marvellous 
store of information on many subjects.''^ Whittier 
was a very gentle man, but "it would be a mistake," 
says his biographer, "to suppose that gentleness was 
a necessity of his nature; it was in reality the result 
of resolute self-control and the habitual government of 
a tempestuous spirit." ^ But his spirit was also naturally 
loving, magnanimous, and sweet. Of his smile a friend 
said : " It is one of the sweetest smiles ever seen on the 
face of a man. ... In repose his face is almost stern, 
but when anything amuses him you see a light dance for 
an instant in his eyes, and then seem slowly to expand 
over his face, as a circling wave expands upon the sur- 
face of a placid pool. . . . He smiles frequently, too, 
for he is always awake to the humorous side of things, 
and you cannot entertain him in any way more certainly 
than by telling him bright, witty stories."^ On his jus- 
tice, his generosity, his tenderness, his virgin purity of 
soul, his childlike yet profound trust in God, there is 

1 The Century Magazine, January, 1893. 

2 Mrs. Harriet M. Pitman, as quoted in Pickard, Vol. I., pp. 58, 59. 

3 Pickard, Vol. II., p. 551. 4 ibid., Vol. II., p. 556. 



234 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

no need to dwell, for they envelop his pages like an 
atmosphere. 

Whittier's earliest verses show that he was, as he him- 
self has said, "a dreamer born," and that it was at some 
personal sacrifice that, in his anti-slavery poems, he 

. . . left the Muses' haunts to turn 
The crank of an opinion-mill, 
Making his rustic reed of song 
A weapon in the war with wrong.i 

The Indian poems, Mogg Megone and The Bridal of 
Fenacook, are failures however, the first shipwrecking 
on the Scylla of repulsive realism and the second on the 
Charybdis of a false idealism.^ But Cassandra South- 
wick and The Exiles are promising for their imaginative 
and truthful handling of themes from colonial history. 

Voices of Freedom^ and the other poems on slavery, 
are noble as morals and often admirable as impassioned 
rhetoric; but as poetry they are mostly naught, abound- 
ing in such lines as 

New Hampshire thunders an indignant No ! ^ 

Too much is made, also, of the merely physical suffer- 
ings of the slave, whose "chains" are always "clank- 
ing," while 

The driver plies his reeking thong.* 

And the tender-hearted philanthropist, not the far-seeing 
statesman, speaks in the occasional passages which show 
that Whittier, like his fellow-abolitionists, underesti- 
mated the importance of preserving the Union as the 
only sufficient guarantee of liberty and the advance of 

1 The Tent on the Beach, '^ Cf. what is said about Hiawatha, p. 187, 
3 JSfew Hampshire, ^ The World's Convention. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 235 

civilization in the New World. ^ But after all deductions 
have been made, every true Anglo-Saxon must rejoice 
that these poems were written, and the American may be 
proud that they were written by a fellow-countryman. 
They blaze and thrill with magnificent passion for per- 
sonal liberty and withering scorn for the coward and 
knave. Some of them, as Massachusetts to Virginia and 
To Faneuil Hall, are superb pieces of defiant declama- 
tion at a time when "doughfaces" abounded in the 
North. A few, as The Slave-Ships, The Farewell of a 
Virginia Slave Mother, and The Slaves of Martifiique, 
have considerable imagination, beauty, and pathos. 
Randolph of Roanoke is an example of Whittier's shrewd 
yet magnanimous estimate of men. Ichabod is the more 
terrible as an arraignment because of its restraint and its 
dirge-like mourning for a great leader once revered and 
loved. ^ Songs of Labor and the poems entitled In War 
Time have, as a whole, small merit of any sort; but one 
of the latter, Barbara Frietchie, whatever its historical 
accuracy, is admirable for its ballad-like simplicity and 
directness, and its thrill of patriotic heroism. 

Most of the poems which have given Whittier a high 
place in American literature were written during the 
second and more tranquil half of his life, when ill 
health made him less active in the cause of reform, or, 
the great conflict ended, he felt wholly free to let 

Old, harsh voices of debate 
Flow into rhythmic song.^ 

^ See Texas. 

2 It is said that Webster was more deeply cut by it than by any other 
of the criticisms hurled at him for his famous Seventh of March speech. 
See The Lost Occasion for Whittier's later and milder view of the fallen 
idol. 3 My Birthday. 



236 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

His gift for historical ballads, in which he has no rival 
among American poets, showed itself in The Witch's 
Datighte7', Skipper Ireson's Ride, The Pipes at Lucknow, 
How the Wo7nen Went from Dover, and other poems, 
that combine historic truth of fact and atmosphere with 
imaginative interest and much of the freshness and easy 
swing of style and verse that characterize the old ballads. 
There is no better introduction to certain phases of 
early New England history than some of these unpre- 
tentious poems. The same rare qualities of simplicity, 
and a freshness as of the woods and fields, appear in the 
ballad of Maud Muller, so full of the breath of meadows 
and the pathos of everyday life, with the fetters imposed 
by custom and social cares upon poor and rich alike. 
Whittier's gift for the ballad form reached its highest 
expression in Telling the Bees, the most exquisite of all 
his poems and unequalled among American ballads for 
its union of spontaneity with finish, homely but beautiful 
descriptive setting, and the very soul of delicate love- 
pathos. The Barefoot Boy and In School-Days are 
hardly less exquisite, the one as a picture of a New 
England country boy, the other as a memory of the 
angelic purity and tenderness of child-love in the little 
old "schoolhouse by the road." 

Snow-Bound, that unique idyl of New England country 
life in winter, is, on the whole, Whittier's greatest and 
most characteristic poem. Nearly all his previous life 
had been an unconscious preparation for it, and his an- 
cestors had a hand in it before he was born. It could have 
been written only by one bred on a New England farm, in 
whose veins ran blood drawn from the best New England 
stock, and to whom the intellectual, moral, and spiritual 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 237 

atmosphere of New England was his native element. As 
the literary -expression of New England rural life it has no 
rival, and richly deserves its position as one of the few 
American classics. It is by no means faultless. Lame 
rhythms, defective rhymes, and an awkward or obscure 
order of words occasionally annoy the fastidious reader; 
the grouping of the figures is a bit stiff; the ending is be- 
low the level of earlier parts. But these are minor faults, 
and comparatively harmless in a homespun poem whose 
charm does not depend upon external polish. Its pictures 
are very vivid and distinctive, its character-sketches life- 
like and varied, and the whole is permeated with a tonic 
atmosphere of *^ plain living and high thinking." 

The Tent on the Beach, Amo?ig the Hills, The Pennsyl- 
vania Pilgriiti, and most of the other late poems, although 
they show the skill of the experienced craftsman and 
contain beautiful passages, never reach a high level, 
while much is manifestly the work of an old man. One 
other class of Whittier's poems, however, deserve special 
mention, — the religious poems. There was more of 
the Hebrew in him than in any other American poet, 
more of that spirit of lofty and fervid devotion charac- 
teristic of ancient psalmist and prophet. This Hebraistic 
element, which so easily errs on the side of fanaticism 
and dogmatic insistence upon creed, was in his case 
happily tempered by the intellectual breadth and the 
sweet charity which were a part of his Quaker heritage. 
Orthodox and heterodox alike accept The Vaudois 
Teacher, Trinitas, Our Master, and The Eternal Good- 
ness as beautiful expressions of the spirit of "pure 
religion and undefiled." In a few poems, notably in 
The Meeting, the distinctive tenets of Quakerism are 



238 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

presented loyally, but in a manner void of offencOc 
Still others, such as My Soul and /, Questions of Lifcy 
The Shadow and the Lights and Adjustmenty show that 
Whittier did not escape the spirit of the age, but that 
the mysteries of life weighed upon him heavily and that 
he attained to faith and calm only through struggle. He 
was no metaphysician, but neither was he a mere blind 
devotee; he looked intellectual difficulties squarely in 
the face, admitted his inability to read the darkest of 
the riddles, and resigned himself to a large trust in the 
goodness of the Eternal. 

Whittier' s prose works, which fill three volumes, have 
little value now except as means to a better knowledge 
of the man. They comprise papers on slavery and other 
political topics, tales and sketches, and a few literary 
criticisms. The most noteworthy are J^ustice and Ex- 
pediency y the poet's first pamphlet upon abolition, in 
which cold facts and calm logic combine with fiery zeal 
against a great wrong, and Margaret Smith's Journal^ 
containing a vivid and truthful picture of life in New 
England in 1 678-1 679. 

It is evident that New England's homespun poet, who 
knew and loved the old masters of English song, was 
keenly aware that he could not equal their sweetest music 
nor their highest flights.^ But it was quite consistent 
with his rare modesty to know also that his homeliness 
was his strength. He was far from illiterate. Burns 
first set him to singing, and the influence of the old 
English ballads and of the modern romantic poets, Scott 
in particular, is noticeable in his verse. But he was 
not bopkish in the same sense that Longfellow was. His 

1 See Procm^ 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 239 

best poems sprang directly from close contact with nature 
and human life; they passed through his library, but 
never originated there. It is this wild-flower odor, this 
sense of the rocky hillside pasture and of the river 
flowing by the old farm, this outdoor knowledge of boy 
and man and woman in his native village, that give 
Whittier's lines their distinctive and enduring charm. 
We feel that this man has not chiefly read, but has lived, 
and that he has put into living words much that was 
most beautiful, picturesque, and noble in the New Eng- 
land of his youth. 

James Russell Lowell ^ was descended from Percival 
Lowell, a Bristol merchant, who came to Massachusetts 
in 1639. His grandfather, John Lowell, was a member 
of the Continental Congress and chief justice of the 
First United States Circuit Court. His father. Rev. 

1 Life. Born in Cambridge, Mass., Feb. 22, 1819. Attended a local 
boarding-school ; in Harvard College, 1834-1838 ; received degree of 
B.L. from Harvard Law School, 1840. Practised law and wrote for 
the magazines, 1840-1844; started The Pioneer magazine, 1843. Mar- 
ried Maria White, 1844; four children, only one of whom survived 
childhood, were born to him. Regular contributor to The Anti-Slavery 
Standard, 1846-1850. In Europe, 185 1- 1852. Wife died, 1853. Lec- 
tured before the Lowell Institute, 1855. Appointed Professor of French 
and Spanish Languages and Literatures, and Belles-Lettres, in Harvard 
College, 1855. In Europe, 1855-1856. Professor at Harvard, 1856- 
1877. Married Frances Dunlap, 1857. Edited The Atlantic Monthly, 
1857-1861 ; an editor of The North American Review, 1863-1872. In 
Europe, 1872-1874. Received degree of D.C.L. from Oxford Univer- 
sity, 1873. Minister to Spain, 1877-1880; visited Greece and Turkey, 
1878; Minister to England, 1880-1885; received degree of LL.D, from 
Harvard College, 1884 ; wife died, 1885. In America, at Southborough, 
Mass., and Boston, with frequent short trips to England, 1885-1889; 
in Cambridge, Mass., 1889-1891. Died in Cambridge, Aug. 12, 1891. 
A Unitarian. 

Works. Class Poem, 1838. A Year's Life, 1841. Poems, 1844. 
Conversations on Some of the Old Poets, 1845. The Vision of Sir 
Launfal, 1845. Poems, 1848. A Fable for Critics, 1848. The Biglow 



240 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

Charles Lowell, for many years pastor of a Unitarian 
church in Boston, was a man of more than usual literary 
culture. From his mother, who came of an old Orkney 
family, the poet "believed himself to have inherited his 
love of nature and his poetic temperament."^ In this 
cultured Christian home the boy grew up into all that 
is noble, manly, and refined. He was a thoroughly 
healthy boy, not too fond of the schoolroom, although a 
good scholar.^ At college Lowell was popular, and he 
enjoyed his life there. His taste for books, and for 
good editions, grew apace. He read widely, wrote 
poetry, and fell in love. His letters at this period show 
him as a somewhat callow youth, but brimful of intellect, 
literary sense, humor, and good spirits. For neglect of 
the routine studies he was "rusticated" in his senior 
year, and spent several months in Concord, studying 
under the clergyman there; his class-day poem had 

Papers, First Series, 1848 (appeared first in the Boston Courier, 1846- 
1848) ; Second Series, 1867 (appeared first in The Atlantic Monthly, 
1862-1866). Poems, 1849. Fireside Travels, 1864. Commemoration 
Ode, 1865. Poetical Works, 1869. Under the Willows, 1869. The 
Cathedral, 1869. Among My Books, First Series, 1870; Second Series, 
1876. My Study Windows, 1871. Three Memorial Poems, 1876. 
Democracy and Other Addresses, 1887. Heartsease and Rue, 1888. 
Political Essays, 1888. Latest Literary Essays and Addresses, 1892. 
The Old English Dramatists, 1892 (delivered before the Lowell Insti- 
tute, 1887). Letters, 1893. 

1 C. E. Norton, in his edition of Lowell's letters. Vol. L, p. 2. 

2 His early letters, while delightfully boyish, anticipate some of the 
qualities of the man : " My Dear Brother, — I am now going to tell 
you melancholy news. I have got the ague together with a gumbile. . . . 
The boys are all very well except Nemaise, who has got another piece 
of glass in his leg. ... I have got quite a library. The Master has 
not taken his rattan out since the vacation. Your little kitten is as well 
and as playful as ever and I hope you are to for I am sure I love you as 
well as ever. Why is grass like a mouse you cant guess that he he he 
ho ho ho ha ha ha hum hum hum." — Letter, Nov. 2, 1828. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 241 

therefore to be delivered by another. For the next few 
years Lowell wavered between law and literature. He 
learned enough law to get admitted to the bar, but he 
never had much practice; and as soon as he was able to 
make a scanty living by writing for periodicals, he for- 
sook the courts of justice for the courts of the Muses. 
His first wife, herself a poetess, was admirably adapted 
to be his companion, and Lowell's life was for many 
years a very happy one in spite of straitened means 
and the death of several children. His first trip abroad 
was made chiefly for the benefit of Mrs. Lowell's health; 
but the death of their infant son, in Rome, was a blow 
from which she never really recovered. Her death, a 
year later, left the poet a very lonely man ; ^ but '^ his 
temperament was too healthy, his character too strong, 
to allow him to give way to despair; ... he sought 
distraction in work." ^ His lectures on the English 
poets, before the Lowell Institute, were very popular 
and greatly increased his reputation, and he naturally 
became Longfellow's successor in the professorship of 
belles'leth'es at Harvard. 

Lowell was now able to devote himself in peace of 
mind to the literary and scholarly pursuits in which he 
most delighted, although his interest in the anti-slavery 
cause, and in political matters generally, was still strong. 
His second marriage to a talented woman renewed his 
domestic happiness; and for many years his life at 
"Elmwood," the ancestral residence in Cambridge, a 

1 " I do abhor sentimentality from the bottom of my soul, and can- 
not wear my grief upon my sleeves, but yet I look forward with agony 
to the time when she may become a memory instead of a constant 
presence." — Letter, Nov. 25, 1853. 

2 C. E. Norton, in his edition of Lowell's letters, Vol. I., p. 204. 



242 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

spacious colonial house pleasantly situated within sight 
of the river Charles, was almost the ideal life of the man 
of letters. As a teacher he was unconventional, unique, 
vital. ^ But the routine wore on him.^ The preparation 
of lectures and the editorship of two magazines still 
further developed his critical powers at the expense of 
his poetical. But Lowell was by nature a student and 
critic as well as poet; and probably the things of the 
intellect would have filled a larger and larger place in 
his life as youth gave way to middle age, whatever his 
daily pursuits had been.^ Lowell, however, was not 
only a poet and scholar; he was also a man of the world, 

1 " Now and again, some word or some passage would suggest to 
him a line of thought — sometimes very earnest, sometimes paradoxi- 
cally comical — that it would never have suggested to any one else. 
And he would lean back in his chair, and talk away across country till 
he felt like stopping; or he would thrust his hands into the pockets of 
his rather shabby sack-coat, and pace the end of the room with his heavy 
laced boots, and look at nothing in particular, and discourse of things 
in general. We gave up note-books in a week." " In a month I could 
read Dante better than I ever learned to read Greek or Latin or Ger- 
man." — Professor Barrett Wendell, in Stelligeri, p. 207. 

2 In 1874, while m Europe, he wrote, " My being a professor wasn't 
good for me — it damped my gunpowder. ... If I were a profane 
man, I should say, ' Darn the College ! ' " 

3 " I have been at work, ... in making books that I had read and 
marked really useful by indexes of all peculiar words and locutions. 
... I have been reading many volumes of the Early English Text 
Society's series in the same thorough way. ... I have now reached 
the point where I feel sure enough of myself in Old French and Old 
English to make my corrections with a pen instead of a pencil as I go 
along. Ten hours a day, on an average, I have been at it for the last 
two months, and get so absorbed that I turn grudgingly to anything 
else." — Letter, Sept. 19, 1874. " All around us [in Lowell's study] were 
the crowded book-shelves, whose appearance showed them to be the 
companions of the true hterary workman. . . . Their ragged bindings, 
and thumbed pages scored with frequent pencil-marks, implied that 
they were a student's tools. . . . He would sit among his books, pipe 
in mouth, a book in hand, hour after hour." — Leslie Stephen, in Nor- 
ton's edition of Lowell's letters, Vol. I., p. 408. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 243 

and he was deeply interested in the problems of govern- 
ment under a republic. Believing profoundly, though 
not blindly, in democracy, he was a severe and trenchant 
critic of the attitude taken by the upper classes of Eng- 
land during our Civil War, for his Americanism, however 
courteous, was always self-poised and sometimes aggres- 
sive.^ In England he would probably have become a 
scholar-statesman, like John Morley ; in America his 
only chance in political life was as foreign minister; 
and as he had succeeded Longfellow in the professor's 
chair, so he fittingly became the successor of Irving at 
the court of Spain. His transference to Westminster 
proved to be one of the fortunate incidents which have 
helped to draw England and the United States closer 
together in recent years. During his brilliant term of 
service, our foremost man of letters furnished an example 
of the ideal attitude for the whole nation, an atti- 
tude of broad-minded love for "Our Old Home" with 
entire self-respect and stanch independence. After re- 
turning to this country, Lowell became a healthful in- 
fluence in our domestic politics by promoting political 
activity on the part of men of high intellect and char- 
acter. But his own days of action were nearly spent. 
The death of his wife and the infirmities of age made 
his last years lonely and sometimes painful. He retained 
his intellect and courage and youth of spirit to the end, 
however, and his last published letter is as witty and 

1 See his letters, Vol. L, pp. 409-412, for Leslie Stephen's experience. 
From amidst the splendors of the Spanish court he writes in 1878 : " But 
to me, I confess, it is all vanity and vexation of spirit. I like America 
better every day." In his last years he loved English life very much, 
and found European civilization more interesting than American ; but 
his profound faith in his country never died. 



244 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

lovable as any.^ But his work was done; he was only 
waiting for the end, nor did he wait long. 

Lowell's early poems show clearly the influence of his 
reading in the English poets. The accent of Tennyson 
is unmistakable in The Sirens, Irene, Rosaline, Colum- 
bus, and others/'^ To Perdita Singing and Prometheus 
would never have been written but for Shelley's lyrics 
and Prometheus Unbound. Rhxcus has much of Lan- 
dor's manner, different as the poem is from the latter 's 
less didactic Hamadryad on the same Greek legend. A 
Legend of Brittany combines Keats 's adoring love of 
sensuous beauty with something of Chaucer's simplicity 
and naive pathos in narration. The Ode to France was 
evidently modelled, consciously or unconsciously, upon 
Coleridge's similar ode. The nature poems would not 
have been what they are had not Wordsworth and Keats 
already led the way. All this is not to say that Lowell 
was a mere imitator even in his earlier work. From the 
first there was something distinctive in his tone and 
atmosphere, although often it was slight and hardly 
definable. In his best nature poems, early and late, 
— such as ^;z Indian- Summer Reverie, To the Dandelion, 
the preludes in The Vision of Sir Launfal (so superior to 

1 " If I have not written, it has been because I had nothing good to 
say of myself. I have been very wretched with one thing and another. 
And now a painful sensation is taking its place. I could crawl about a 
little till this came, and now my chief exercise is on the nightmare. I 
can't sleep without opium. ... I thank God for that far-away visit of 
yours, which began for me one of the dearest friendships of my life. . . . 
I never read so many [novels] before, I think, in my life, and they come 
to me as fresh as the fairy tales of my boyhood. . . . All your friends 
here are well, and each doing good in his several way." — Letter to 
Leslie Stephen, June 21, 1891. 

2 Compare the above-named especially with Tennyson's Lotus Eaters, 
Isabet Oriana, and Ulysses respectively. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 245 

the rather commonplace narrative parts), Under the Wil- 
lows^ and Pictures from Appledore^ — he unites the truth 
and health of Wordsworth with the flush of Keats, some- 
times adding a playfulness not found in either. Deeper 
and more passionate than Longfellow, more intellectual 
and ideal than Whittier, not so philosophical as Emer- 
son but more sensuous, less elemental and sublime than 
Bryant but far more human and sunny, Lowell is, on the 
whole, the richest and most satisfying of our poets of 
nature. June, in particular, was made for this poet, 
and he for June. Yet the earlier poems, as a whole, are 
nevertheless comparatively imitative and "literary." 

But keenly sensitive as Lowell was to English literary 
influences, he was also intensely alive to American con- 
ditions both in the world of letters and in the world of 
politics. In A Fable for Critics and The Biglow Papers 
he suddenly revealed powers that could not have been 
divined from his previous work. The Fable contains a 
series of critical judgments upon contemporary Ameri- 
can literature that are, as a rule, surprisingly accurate; 
and its torrent of puns and its overflowing energy of 
good-natured satire are still enjoyable. The Biglow 
Papers were inspired by as hearty a hatred for slavery as 
burned in Whittier, while in literary sense, dramatic 
power, rollicking humor, and use of the racy Yankee dia- 
lect, they are quite unrivalled among American poems on 
political subjects. It must be confessed, however, that 
as pure literature neither series has altogether held its 
own. The humor of the Rev. Homer Wilbur sooner or 
later palls, and most of the poems are overweighted with 
the details of contemporary politics, that perennially 
interesting bucolic idyl, The Courtin\ only emphasizing 



246 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

this defect by contrast. Yet, as a whole, in conception 
and execution The Bigloiv Papers remain Lowell's raci- 
est, most original, and most distinctively American work 
in verse. Of the poems grouped together as " Poems of 
the War,'* the only remarkable one is the Ode Recited at 
the Harvard Commemoration, which contains the best 
delineation, in verse, of the character of Lincoln. Under 
the Old Elm, similarly, is notable chiefly for its portrait 
of Washington. Both odes have many faulty lines and 
not a few prosaic passages, but their general effect is 
noble, and they are still our best examples of a very 
difficult species of poetical composition. A very differ- 
ent class of Lowell's poems, those springing from inci- 
dents and moods in his personal life, have a peculiar 
charm, for they bring us close to the man himself. Some 
of the earlier poems of this sort, as The Changeling, 
in their graceful tenderness remind one of Longfellow. 
The later, such as The Dead House, Ode to Happiness, 
A Familiar Epistle to a Friend, and the memorial verses 
on Agassiz, are more distinctive, often uniting deep and 
subtle thought with delightful play of fancy and humor. 
The longest of these poems. The Cathedral, is the finest 
expression, in American verse, of the spirit of modern 
religious doubt — its half-regret for the loss of the 
mediaeval faith, its intellectual integrity in refusing to 
delude itself, its reverential groping toward a new form 
of faith in which heart and brain alike may find rest. 
The form of the poem is hardly worthy of its substance, 
being often diffuse and occasionally too colloquial; for 
its thought, however, The Cathedral deserves to be read 
along with the similar poems of Tennyson, Arnold, and 
Clough. Lowell's very latest verses, all too few, are rich 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 247 

with the mellow fruitage of an intellectual life nobly 
lived, but add nothing distinctive to his poetic fame. 

The prose works fall into three classes : literary essays, 
essays on public men and political topics, and miscel- 
laneous essays. The literary essays, many of which first 
existed as lectures, are the most numerous and most 
significant. Lowell had very exceptional qualifications 
for the difficult task of literary criticism. He was him- 
self a poet, yet had also the needful prosaic gifts of 
common-sense and masculine understanding; his literary 
sense was at once nice, robust, and catholic; he was 
widely read in many literatures, and a careful student 
of several; without a trace of pedantry he had those 
scholarly instincts for lack of which many men of letters, 
so delightful as companions, are so untrustworthy and 
sometimes so exasperating as guides; he knew men and 
the world as well as books; while more anxious to inter- 
pret than to flay, he could use the knife on occasion; 
and he was master of a style which, although far from 
faultless, often sinning by jerkiness, "smartness," and 
too continual emphasis, is eminently readable by reason 
of its strength, its incisiveness, its sparkle of wit and 
flash of sarcasm, and the abounding vitality which per- ■ 
vades every sentence from the first word to the last. The 
range of his knowledge and the breadth of his sympathies 
are remarkable. His essay on Dante is still the best 
general introduction to the study of the great poet of the 
Middle Ages, He knew the profound mind of Lessing. 
To Rousseau he could be just, in spite of the inborn 
dislike of the Anglo-Saxon for certain phases of the Gal- 
lic mind and temperament. He was equally at home in 
discussing the technique of Milton*s blank verse or the 



^8 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

religious ideas of Paradise Lost, He was able to say 
something new and helpful even upon Shakspere. 
Wordsworth the poet he revered, but '* Daddy Words- 
worth *^ he could laugh at* Chaucer, Spenser, and Keats 
were brothers to his soul, yet one of the most masterly 
of his essays is that upon the masculine and intellectual 
Dryden; and if his sympathy with Pope was less com- 
plete, he nevertheless showed great admiration for 
the wit and the sting of the "Wasp of Twickenham." 
Nearly all his criticisms have the rare merit of increas- 
ing the reader's enjoyment of the authors discussed, at 
the same time that they broaden his knowledge and 
sharpen his critical sense. As to Lowell's historical 
position in literary criticism, the words of a living Eng- 
lish scholar have special weight: "The wide dissemi- 
nation of our race over the western and the northern 
continents is raising up new centres of culture, which 
derive their tone from England, which provide her men 
of letters with a public destined to become more ample 
than Europe could afford were Europe English, and 
which promises to afford them, at no distant date, all 
the advantages of exterior criticism unwarped by having 
had to pass through a foreign medium. ... It would 
almost seem that while superior excellence of production 
may long remain the attribute of England, the decisive 
voice in criticism may pass to America. . . . The 
affluence of importation [of foreign literature into 
America} . . . fosters that width of view and freedom 
from conventional prejudice which distinguishes Ameri- 
can judgment in literary as in other matters. Americans 
far surpass us English in the prompt recognition of 
excellence. . . . Two natural and inevitable develop- 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 249 

ments may be remarked in American criticism. There 
is, first, the classical, conservative, cautious school of the 
Irvings and Channings and Ticknors, and of the old 
North American Review in general; a school consciously 
under the influence of the old country. There is also 
a younger school consciously aiming at originality, at ' 
evolving a national type, and occupying a position in 
criticism akin to Bret Harte's in production. . . . Mr. 
Russell Lowell is, in a sense, the most perfect represen- 
tative of American criticism to be found, for he occu- 
pies a central position between the old school and the 
new. . . . His criticisms hint what service American 
culture may render to English letters when it has obtained 
an entirely independent point of view."^ The miscel- 
laneous essays, including My Garden Acquaintance^ On 
a Certain Condescension in Foreigners ^ etc., although 
entertaining and keen, are of minor consequence. 
Those on public men and political topics, of which 
Abraham Lincoln and Democracy are the chief, have 
permanent value for their ardent but intelligent Ameri- 
canism, their searching analysis of character, their flexile 
grasp on the principles of government, and their pure 
and lofty ideal of national life. 

James Russell Lowell is our greatest man of letters, in 
the special sense of that term. His literary sense was a 
constituent part of all his thinking and feeling, adding 
to everything that he wrote an artistic quality without in 
the least diminishing the impression of earnestness and 
sincerity. A charming letter- writer; one of the few lit- 
erary critics whose criticisms are themselves literature; 

1 Richard Garnett in his introduction to My Study Windows (Lon« 
don, Walter Scott, 1886). 



250 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

a wise publicist, touching political problems with large 
sanity and a noble idealism; a vigorous humorist and 
satirist; an exponent of the best American traditions 
and of the best English culture; a poet in whose 
pages are gleams of a poetic gift perhaps richer than 
can be found elsewhere in our literature; he stands 
quite unrivalled among American authors for combined 
excellence and versatility of production. And, yet, 
upon laying down his works we have a certain feeling of 
disappointment, as if he had not given us quite such 
good things, certainly not so many of the best things, as 
we had a right to expect from a nature so rarely endowed. 
This feeling is strongest in regard to his poetry. It 
would seem that the proverbially jealous Muse made even 
Lowell pay the penalty of versatility, angry that the 
incense of his worship should smoke upon other altars 
than her own. But it is allowed us to believe that, on 
the whole, it was best so; America, at the stage of culture 
which she had then reached, perhaps needing a great 
man of letters more than she needed a somewhat greater 
poet. At least, we may justly be proud to have so early 
produced a man worthy of admission into the illustrious 
fellowship of Dryden, Addison, and Samuel Johnson. 

Oliver Wendell Holmes ^ belonged to what he himself 
styled the " Brahmin caste " of New England. On his 

1 Life. Born in Cambridge, Mass., Aug. 29, 1809. In Phillips 
Academy, Andover, 1824-1825 ; in Harvard College, 1825-1829 ; in the 
Harvard Law School, 1829-1830 ; in a Boston medical school, 1830-1832 ; 
studied medicine in Paris, 1833-1835, making visits to Germany, England, 
and Italy. Began the practice of medicine in Boston, 1836 ; professor of 
anatomy in Dartmouth College, 1839-1840. Married Amelia L. Jack- 
son, 1840; two sons and a daughter were born to him. Professor of 
anatomy in the Harvard Medical School, 1847-1882 ; dean, 1847-1853. 
Received the degree of LL.D. from Harvard, 1880. To Europe, 1886; 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 251 

mother's side he was descended from Anne and Governor 
Bradstreet; ^ his first paternal ancestor in America, John 
Holmes, settled in Woodstock, Connecticut, in 1682, and 
had for descendants a deacon, a captain and surgeon, 
and a clergyman. The last, the poet's father, was him- 
self an author in verse and prose; but it is said that 
Holmes derived much more of his intellectual quality 
from his mother, who was " a bright, vivacious woman, 
of small figure and sprightly manners."^ As a lad, the 
future author of The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table 
early revealed a wide-awake, inquisitive mind and a love 
of letters. He read eagerly in his father's library of 
one or two thousand volumes, reading ** in books rather 
than through them,"^ and he soon became a rhymer 
himself. Although his class poem and his contributions 
to college periodicals showed no great promise on the 
whole,^ he had only just completed his twenty-first year 

received the degree of Doctor of Letters from Cambridge, LL.D. from 
Edinburgh, D.C.L. from Oxford. Died Oct. 7, 1894. A Unitarian. 

Works. Poems, 1836-1850. Collected edition in 2 vols., 1892. 
Medical Essays, 1842, 1843 ; collected 1861. Pages from an old Volume 
of Life, 1857-1861 ; collected 1863. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 
1858 (first in the Atlantic Monthly, 1857-1858). The Professor at the 
Breakfast Table, 1859 (first in the Atla?itic Monthly, 1859). Elsie Venner, 
1861 (first in the Atlantic Monthly, 1859-1860, as The Professor's Story). 
The Guardian Angel, 1867 (first in the Atlantic Monthly, 1867) . The Poet 
at the Breakfast Table, 1872 (first in the Atlantic Monthly, 1871-1872). 
Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, 1878. Life of Emerson, in the Ameri- 
can Men of Letters series, 1884. A Mortal Antipathy, 1885 (first in the 
Atlantic Mo?ithly, 1884-1885). Over the Tea-Cups, 1890 (first in the 
Atlantic Monthly, 1888-1889). Our Hundred Days in Europe, 1887. 

1 See pp. 26-27, 299. Another of his mother's ancestors, Evert Jansen 
Wendell, a Dutchman, settled in Albany about the year 1640. 

2 Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, by J. T. Morse, Jr., Vol. 
I., p. 15. 

3 " The Autobiographical Notes," in Morse, Vol. I., p. 40. 

4 The Mysterious Visitor, The Spectre Pig, and a few other of these 
juvenilia have, however, survived. 



252 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

when Old Ironsides gave him a taste of fame.^ A year'« 
study of the law convinced the young poet that the legal 
profession was not for him. The study of medicine, 
also, he took up without much interest at first; but 
during his two years' residence abroad he became an 
enthusiastic student under the foremost Parisian savants, 
and upon his return to Boston he settled down con- 
tentedly enough to the life of a physician. He never 
had a large practice, partly because many people mis- 
trusted (in this case unjustly) the professional skill of 
a doctor who was also a poet and wit, and who could 
pun about his own business by announcing that "the 
smallest fevers would be thankfully received." But he 
won several prizes for medical essays, and in the essay 
upon puerperal fever " made an original and a greatly 
valuable contribution to medical science."'^ As profes- 
sor of anatomy his career was long and honorable, and 
in one way brilliant. His gifts of wit and fancy were 
pressed into service to enliven a rather dry subject, which 
he nevertheless taught with great thoroughness, and the 
last hour of the day was always assigned to him "because 
he alone could hold his exhausted audience's attention.*' ^ 



1 The poem, which was hastily written with a pencil on a scrap of 
paper, as a protest against the threatened destruction of the old frigate 
" Constitution," was first published in The Boston Daily Advertiser, and, 
being copied in the newspapers throughout the country, raised such a 
storm of popular sentiment that the Navy Department countermanded 
its order. 

2 Morse, Vol. I., p. 164. 

s Morse, Vol. I., p. 176. " ' These, gentlemen,' he said on one 
occasion, . . . ' are the tuberosities of the ischia, on which man was 
designed to sit and survey the works of Creation.* " " None but Holmes 
could have compared the microscopical coiled tube of a sweat-gland to 
a fairy's intestine." — Reminiscences by Holmes's assistants, in Morse. 
Vol. I., pp. 177, 179. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 253 

In these labors the years sped rapidly away, and 
Holmes had passed middle age without achieving any- 
thing more than a local reputation as poet and wit. It 
was the publication of The Autocrat of the Breakfast 
Table^ in the early numbers of The Atlantic Monthly^ 
which made the Boston medical lecturer a world-famous 
man of letters.^ From this time on, almost to the end 
of a very long life, his literary career was a series of 
successes, his subsequent works confirming and extend- 
ing, although they did not heighten, the reputation which 
The Autocrat had won. That he was able to carry on, 
for so long and so successfully, two kinds of exacting 
labor, as writer and lecturer, was due in no small part to 
his wife, "a comrade the most delightful, a helpmate 
the most useful," who "hedged him carefully about and 
protected him from distractions and bores and interrup- 
tions."*^ A family of promising children, one of whom 
has since attained distinction, and a circle of brilliant 
friends, combined with other circumstances and a cheery 
temperament to make an exceptionally happy life.^ 
His four months' tour in Europe, when he was hard 
upon eighty years of age, afforded new evidence both of 

1- " In The New England Magazine, which lived briefly from 183 1 to 
1835, Dr. Holmes had published two papers under this same name and 
of much this sam.e plan." — Morse, Vol. I., p. 205. Lowell had a hand 
in revealing Holmes to the world, for in accepting the editorship of The 
Atlantic Monthly he made it a condition that the doctor should be "the 
first contributor to be engaged " ; the latter afterward said, " [Lowell] 
woke me from a kind of literary lethargy in which I was half slumber- 
ing." — Morse, Vol, L, p. 204. 

2 Morse, Vol. L, pp. 170, 171. 

3 Holmes especially delighted in the "Saturday Club," whose mem- 
bership included Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Lowell, Motley, 
Whittier, Agassiz, Sumner, Prescott, and many other distinguished and 
*' clubable " men. 



254 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870, 

his fame and of his capacity for enjoyment still. But 
already the years had begun to bring their inevitable sor- 
row. Some of his dearest friends had passed away, and 
he was destined to be almost " the last leaf '' on a once 
crowded bough. In 1884 his younger son died; four 
years later, his wife; and in one year more, his only 
daughter. Shortly before this his eyesight had grown 
very dim from cataract, which threatened him with total 
blindness; happily he was spared this affliction, so 
dreadful to a man of letters, and he had some use of his 
eyes to the very last.^ His closing days were tranquil 
and crowned with honor. Year after year, in his beauti- 
ful summer home at Beverly Farms, the old man received, 
with that harmless vanity which did not ill become him, 
the congratulations that poured in upon him, with every 
returning birthday, from the friends and strangers who 
delighted to do honor to almost the last survivor of the 
nation's greatest group of writers. Decay and death 
stole upon him by scarcely perceptible degrees, and he 
died painlessly in his chair at last. 

The individuality of Doctor Holmes is so stamped 
upon his pages that there is no need to dwell upon it 
separately. But his writings are the embodiment of 
something more than an original, sparkling, keen- 
minded, and kind-hearted personality. They are also 
an expression of New England, and particularly of Bos- 
ton as Boston was in the middle of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. Holmes was as distinctively American and (in a 



1 In 1887 he wrote to a friend that he had " a cataract in the kitten state 
of development." Equally characteristic, in another way, was " the 
serene and cheerful courage with which he faced the dread prospect " of 
total blindness. — Morse, Vol. I., pp. 74, 75. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 255 

good sense) provincial as any Texan cowboy or Cali- 
fornian poker-sharp, although Europeans with an imper- 
fect knowledge of American life have not always fully 
realized the fact. In studying the various classes of his 
works, it. is therefore profitable to note the impress of 
heredity and environment as well as that of a unique 
personality. 

Holmes's greatest ambition was to be a poet. It is 
pleasant to believe that the soul of his far-off ancestress, 
that "Tenth Muse lately sprung up in America," ^ lived 
again in him, and in his poems found the more perfect 
expression which had been impossible to her in Puritan 
New England's early days. But it must be doubted 
whether even the nineteenth-century poet attained more 
than twice to any very high degree of purely poetical 
excellence, — once in The Chambered Nautilus^ which 
is perfect as the beautiful embodiment of a noble pre- 
cept, and again in The Last Leaf, so unique a blending 
of seemingly irreconcilable elements that one is tempted 
to describe it as a minuet danced with dainty lightness 
to the music of an elegy. ^ In most of his other famous 
poems, such as The One-Hoss Shay, Dorothy Q., and 
The Broomstick Train, imagination is less conspicuous 
than wit, satire, and fancy in the service of these. ^ As 
poetry of the lighter intellectual type, they stand high; 

1 See p. 26. 

2 " Is there in all literature a lyric in which drollery, passing nigh 
unto ridicule yet stopping short of it, and sentiment becoming pathos 
yet not too profound, are so exquisitely intermingled ? . . . To spill 
into the mixture the tiniest fraction of a drop too much of either ingre- 
dient was to ruin all." — Morse, Vol. I., p. 229. 

3 The Broomstick Train is notable both as the work of so old a man 
and as a fanciful union of the ancient marvel of New England witchcraft 
with the modern marvel of electricity. 



256 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

and as a writer of vers d' occasion Holmes has no superior 
and few equals, for he could be merry and wise at the 
same instant and without letting either quality get in the 
way of the other. A predominance of intellectual ele- 
ments was natural enough in the poetry of a clear-headed 
man of science and a descendant of the logical Puritans. 
Doctor Holmes was, furthermore, by heredity and en- 
vironment, an aristocrat of the New England sort, and he 
showed the conservatism of an aristocrat in his literary 
leanings as in most others, preferring to model his verse 
upon the clean-cut, intellectual poetry of the eighteenth 
century, on which his youth had been nourished, rather 
than upon the romantic poetry of his own century.^ In 
so doing he was wise, for he thereby attempted nothing 
which he could not do well. In the service of far-darting 
Apollo he did not aim at many marks, but the marks he 
aimed at he hit. 

Brilliant as Holmes's poetry is, the prose works of the 
*' Breakfast Table " series are perhaps more brilliant still; 
certainly they are a more complete expression of the 
man and of the atmosphere in which he lived. The 
Autocrat has been happily described as "verbal cham- 
pagne "; a more homely but no less truthful comparison 
would liken it to Apollinaris water — all bubble and 
pricRie. Doctor Holmes was one of the most brilliant 
talkers that ever lived, ^ and his biographer says that 

1 " My favorite reading [in youth] was Pope's Homer ; to the present 
time the grand couplets ring in my ears and stimulate my imagination, 
in spite of their formal symmetry, which makes them hateful to the law- 
less versificators who find anthems in the clash of blacksmiths' hammers, 
and fugues in the jangle of the sleigh bells." — " The Autobiographical 
Notes/' in Morse, Vol. I., p. 48. 

2 " Perhaps no man of modern times has given his contemporaries a 
more extraordinary impression of wit in conversation. We are told 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 257 

^The Autocrat held his talk crystallized."^ The plan 
of the book is original and happy, allowing the freedom 
and discursiveness of "table-talk" to be combined with 
something of the continuity of the essay j nor are the 
more popular elements of a love story and of character- 
sketching wholly lacking. Into this mould are poured 
the wit and wisdom of a lifetime. George William 
Curtis has spoken of "the whimsical discursiveness 
of the book, the restless hovering of that brilliant 
talk over every topic, fancy, feeling, fact." And he 
adds, "There are few books that leave more distinctly 
the impression of a mind teeming with riches of many 
kinds." ^ Furthermore, The Autocrat is saturated with 
the essence of Bostonian New Englandism — its local 
pride in a state and a city which have played a great part 
in great historic events; its Puritanic cleanness in 
morals; its intellectual form of religion, the intellectu- 
ality (though not the doctrines nor the liberality) a 
lineal descendant of the faith of the Puritans; its Yankee 
shrewdness and wit, permeating a culture fundamentally 
English; its highly intelligent, if conservative and some- 
what provincial, mental attitude and outlook. This 
and more are in The Autocrat, which, without being a 
profound book, may be a very profitable one. They 
greatly err who find in it only the crackling of thorns 
under a pot ; the thorns are there and they crackle, but 



that . . , he listened as brilliantly as he spoke, taking up every challenge, 
capping every anecdote, rippling over with an illuminated cascade of 
fancy and humor and repartee." — Edmund Gosse, in Morse, Vol. I., p. 247. 

1 Morse, Vol. I., p. 245. 

2 Morse, Vol. I., p. 206. Holmes himself said that the papers were 
" not the result of an express premeditation," but were " dipped from the 
running stream of my thoughts." — Ibid., Vol. I., p. 207. 

S 



258 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

there is also something in the pot. The Autocrat is 
deservedly the most popular of the series. The Pro- 
fessor and The Poet have less vivacity, and although 
they are not heavy they are more continuously serious 
in matter and manner. Over the Tea- Cups is naturally 
feebler than the earlier papers, but has its own peculiar 
value as the talk of a brilliant old man. 

No one can regret that Holmes tried his hand at novel- 
writing; yet his novels are the clever work of a very 
bright man rather than the creations of a born novelist. 
All three contain vivid and truthful pictures of New 
England village life and capital sketches of New England 
types. As a whole, however, A Mortal Antipathy ^ writ- 
ten when its author had passed the creative age, is sadly 
inferior to the other two. Elsie Venner is original and 
powerful as a "snake story "; and The Guardian Angel, 
in addition to a piquant style and much admirable wit 
and satire, has one character that deserves to live — 
Byles Gridley, bachelor, retired college professor, and 
author of a dead book. Yet even these two leave the 
impression of being manufactured, not created; and so, 
in fact, they were. Holmes wrote all his novels to illus- 
trate the influence of heredity, and to this theme the plot 
and the characters are too manifestly subordinate.^ But 
although the novels thereby lose in one way, they gain 

1 " You see exactly what I wish to do : to write a story with enough 
of interest in its characters and incidents to attract a certain amount of 
popular attention. Under cover of this to stir that mighty question of 
automatic agency in its relation to self-determination. To do this by 
means of a palpable outside agency, predetermining certain traits of 
character and certain apparently voluntary acts, such as the common 
judgment of mankind and the tribunals of law and theology have been 
in the habit of recognizing as sin and crime. Not exactly insanity, — 
but rather an unconscious intuitive tendency, dating from a powerful 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 259 

in other ways. They are one more contribution of medi- 
cal science to pure literature; they reveal the serious side 
of Holmes more fully ; and the question which they raise, 
in so interesting and original a way, is one of profound 
moment for morals and theology. In fact, the author's 
chief motive in making these studies was ethical and 
theological rather than scientific. He, of course, took 
a lively interest in the purely scientific side of the 
matter.^ But, true to his Puritan descent, he was at 
bottom a moralist and theologian. His hatred of the 
Calvinism in which he had been reared was, indeed, 
intense throughout his adult life. In literature and poli- 
tics a conservative,^ in theology he was a fighting radical. 
His study, in these novels, of the limits of free will, and, 
consequently, the limits of men's moral responsibility 
before God and man, although necessarily not exhaustive, 
strikes deep into the matter from one side — the physical, 

— and is stimulative of thought upon the other sides. 
Considerable emphasis has been laid upon Holmes's 

ante-natal influence, which modifies the whole organization. To make 
the subject of this influence interest the reader, to carry the animalizing 
of her nature just as far as can be done without rendering her repulsive, 

— such is the idea of this story. It is conceived in the fear of God and 
in the love of man." — Letter to Mrs. Stowe, in i860, about Elsie 
Veiiner ; in Morse, Vol. I., pp. 263-264. 

1 " The snake was not repulsive to him ; while writing the book he 
was so desirous to have the rattlesnake vividly present to his mind as a 
hving reptile . . . that he procured a live one . . . and kept it for many 
weeks at the medical school. He had a long stick arranged with a 
padded kid glove at one end and a prodding point at the other, and 
he used to excite the creature and watch its coiling and its striking, 
study its eyes and expression, its ways, its character. ... His scientific 
research explored all printed knowledge concerning the reptiles and 
their venom." — Morse, Vol. I., pp. 258-259. 

2 It is clear that he was at best lukewarm in the anti-slavery, temper- 
ance, and other reforms of his day, despite his letter of self-defence in re- 
ply to Lowell's strictures. (See Morse, Vol. I., pp. 295-303, for the letter.) 



26o THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

Americanism, the flavor of which, as his biographer has 
happily said, is "as local, as pungent, as unmistakable, 
as that of a cranberry from the best bog on Cape Cod." ^ 
But his Americanism was not of the narrow and really 
timorous kind which can maintain itself only by exclud- 
ing foreign influences. Like all the writers of his group, 
he was permeated with the best English culture, which 
was, in a way, as native to the home and community and 
university in which he had been reared as to the mother 
country itself. His classical studies had not failed to 
do their part in the shaping of a poet who has much of 
the donhommie, finished wit, and genial satiric power 
of Horace. His residence in. France, where he became 
intimately familiar with the French language and the 
French mind, reenforced his natural tendency to vivacity 
and piquancy of style. ^ But, after all, these were only 
grafts on the main stock. That stock was American, 
New England, Bostonian; and the genius of the tree was 
one Oliver Wendell Holmes, as unique and entertaining 
an individuality as ever revealed itself in letters. 

Philadelphia continued to be the centre of consider- 
able literary activity, although its importance in this 
respect was relatively less than in earlier days. Among 
the writers who, because of birth or residence in that 
region, may for convenience be grouped together, Rob- 
ert M. Bird (1805-1854) had some prominence, for 
a time; he was editor of the Philadelphia North Ameri- 



1 Morse, Vol. I., p. 208. 

2 His gift in this way may have been partly an inheritance from his 
talented ancestress, Mrs. Bradstreet. See the extracts from her pithy 
Meditations ^ on p. 27. 



PENNSYLVANIA AUTHORS. 261 

can Gazette^ and author of Nick of the Woods : a Tale of 
Kentucky- {i^2>l)i several other novels, and three trage- 
dies, including The Gladiator, which was played by 
Forrest and still holds the boards. Another successful 
dramatist was Robert T. Conrad (1810-1858), editor 
of Graham's Magazine, and author of Aylmere (1841), 
a strong though rather loud play on Jack Cade, which 
was acted by Forrest at home and abroad. Thomas D. 
English (18 19- ), journalist, lawyer, physician, 
wrote novels, poems, and dramas, but only his song of 
Ben Bolt (in Poems, 1855) has lived. The poet and 
artist Thomas B. Read (1822-1872), whose dashing 
Sheridan* s Ride (1865) is one of the most popular of 
the poems of the Civil War, was less happy in his longer 
productions. The New Pastoral (1855), on life in 
Pennsylvania, is slow and heavy; The House by the Sea 
(1855) attempts the supernatural, with small success; 
The Wagoner of the Alleghanies (1862), on the Revolu- 
tionary War, contains some stirring narration and good 
descriptions of American scenery, but lacks the large- 
ness and power demanded by the subject, besides being 
in metre and style manifestly an echo of Scott's narrative 
poems. George H. Boker (1823-1890), minister to 
Turkey and Russia, was a respectable poet and a drama- 
tist of more than ordinary ability.-^ The style of his 
plays is strong and flowing, the characters are clearly 
outlined and motived, and the plots move firmly to a 
dignified climax; Calaynos, his best tragedy, was suc- 
cessfully acted in London in 1849. Charles G. Leland 

1 The Lesson of Life, 1847. Calaynos, 1848. Anne Boleyn, 1850. 
The Podesta's Daughter, 1852. Plays and Poems, 1856. Poems of the 
War, 1864. Etc. 



262 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

(1824-1903), magazine writer and editor, is known 
chiefly by his humorous Hans BreitmarCs Ballads (com- 
plete, 187 1), in the German-American dialect. 

The greatest of the Pennsylvania authors of this 
period was Bayard Taylor.^ His father was a farmer, 

1 Life. Born Jan. 11, 1825, at Kennett Square, Penn. Educated 
in local schools ; in West Chester Academy, 1837-1839 ; in Unionville 
Academy, as student and tutor, 1839-1842. Apprenticed to a printer in 
West Chester, 1842. To England, Germany, Italy, France, 1844-1846. 
Edited The Phcenixville Pioneer, 1846-1847; in New York, writing for 
The Literary World, The Union Magazine, and The Tribune, 1847- 
1849; to California as Tribunes correspondent, 1849-1850. Married 
Mary Agnew, then dying of consumption, 1850. To Egypt, Syria, Asia 
Minor, Ethiopia, Spain, India, China, 1851-1853. Bought a farm near 
Kennett, 1853. Made extensive lecture tours in United States, 1854- 
1856. To Northern Europe, 1856. Married Marie Hansen, daughter 
of a German astronomer, 1857 ; one daughter was born to him. To 
Greece, 1857-1858. Lectured in California and elsewhere, 1858-1861; 
built Cedarcroft on his Kennett estate, and abandoned his New York 
home, 1861. Secretary of the Russian Legation, 1 862-1863. To the 
Rocky Mountains, 1866; to Spain and Italy, 1867-1868. Appointed 
non-resident professor of German literature at Cornell University in 
1869, and lectured there for several years. Offered Cedarcroft for sale, 
and removed to New York, 1871. In Germany, with excursions to Italy, 
Egypt, and Iceland, 1872-1874. In United States, writing and lecturing. 
1874-1878. Minister to Germany, 1878 ; died in Berlin, Dec. 19, 1878. 

Works. Ximena, 1844. Views Afoot, 1846. Rhymes of Travel, 
Ballads, and Poems, 1848 (imprint, 1849). Eldorado, 1850. A Book 
of Romances, Lyrics, and Songs, 1851. A Journey to Central Africa, 

1854. The Lands of the Saracen, 1854. Poems of the Orient, 1854. 
A Visit to India, China, and Japan, 1855. Poems of Home and Travel, 

1855. Northern Travel, 1857. Travels in Greece and Russia, 1859. At 
Home and Abroad, 1859 ; second series, 1862. The Poet's Journal, 
1862. Hannah Thurston, 1863. John Godfrey's Fortunes, 1864. The 
Story of Kennett, 1866. The Picture of St. John, 1866. Colorado : a 
Summer Trip, 1867. The Golden Wedding, 1868. By- Ways of Europe, 
1869. Joseph and His Friend, 1870. Translation of Faust, 1870-1871. 
Beauty and the Beast, and Tales of Home, 1872. The Masque of the 
Gods, 1872. Lars : a Pastoral of Norway, 1873. Egypt and Iceland, 
1874. The Prophet: a Tragedy, 1874. Home Pastorals, Ballads, and 
Lyrics, 1875. The Echo Club, 1876. Boys of Other Countries, 1876. 
The National Ode, 1876. Prince Deukalion, 1878. Studies in German 
Literature, 1879. Critical Essays and Literary Notes, 1880. 



BAYARD TAYLOR. 263 

whose ancestors came to America with Penn; on his 
mother's side he inherited considerable German or 
Swiss blood. In spite of his Quaker training, the boy 
early displayed a restless, roving disposition; but he 
took naturally to letters also, writing verses at seven 
years, and reading Goethe, Scott, and Gibbon while 
yet a mere lad. In his twentieth year he resolved to 
gratify his thirst for foreign travel; but his means being 
very limited, he went through Europe chiefly afoot, and 
often lived upon bread, figs, and chestnuts, at a cost of 
six cents a day. His first book of travels, however, 
became at once popular, and Taylor* s destiny was mani- 
fest : he was to be the man of letters in motion. His 
energy in both travelling and writing was enormous. In 
India he went more than two thousand miles in less 
than two months; in northern Europe he rode two hun- 
dred and fifty miles behind reindeer, and journeyed five 
hundred miles within the Arctic Circle. His pen trav- 
elled nearly as fast as his feet; in two months and a half 
he wrote nine hundred royal octavo pages of a cyclo- 
paedia of travel, and in a night and a day he read Victor 
Hugo's voluminous La Legende des Siecles and wrote a 
long review of it, including metrical translations of five 
poems. All this was not conducive to the highest art 
or to long life. But native restlessness, grief at the 
death of his first wife, poverty, an ambition (resembling 
Scott's) to build up a large estate by the profits of his 
pen, and resulting debts, all combined to allow Taylor 
no rest for hand or foot. The responsibilities of high 
public office proved to be the last straw, and he died 
at his post before his career as minister to Germany had 
little more than begun. 



264 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

Taylor's volumes of travel are entertaining and give 
accurate pictures of the lands through which he passed, 
but such books are, necessarily, sooner or later super- 
seded. His novels, although they sold well for a time, 
have proved, like his tales and sketches, to be lacking 
in vitality. Mr. Stedman thinks Taylor's literary criti- 
cisms " the ripest and most valuable portion of his prose 
labor"; ^ yet who but the scholar now reads them? The 
dramas — both the realistic Prophet, on Mormonism, 
and the idealistic Masque of the Gods and Deukalion, in 
which Shelley's influence is too apparent — are failures, 
although the last two contain noble passages and show 
much metrical skill. The narrative poems are far more 
successful. Lars, with its vivid and finely contrasted 
pictures of life on the Norwegian coast and by the peace- 
ful Delaware, and its portrait of a soul passing from 
half-savage fierceness to the gentleness of Quaker Chris- 
tianity, is deservedly popular. Hylas is a soft and lovely 
retouching of the old Greek myth, not unworthy of 
Landor. In his California Ballads and Pennsylvania 
Idyls Taylor opened fresh fields, which were to be worked 
more fully by later men and were to yield some of our 
most distinctively American products in verse and prose. 
The principal new element, however, which this world- 
traveller brought into American literature was that 
Orientalism which found its best expression in Poems 
of the Orient, including the famous Bedouin Song, 
There was something Oriental in the man himself. It 
appeared in his "down-drooping eyelids; ... in his 
aquiline nose, with the expressive tremor of the nostrils 
as he spoke; in his thinly tufted chin, his close-curling 

1 Poets of America, p. 420. 



WALT WHITMAN. 265 

hair; his love of spices, music, coffee, colors, and per- 
fumes."^ -And it went into these poems, in which one 
finds a sense of the hot desert sands and the fierce sun, 
the Arab's love of his horse, the sensuous languor and 
burning passion of the Oriental's nature. German lit- 
erature affected Taylor's poetry less than might have 
been expected when one considers his saturation in it; 
but his translation of Faust combines considerable 
scholarship with remarkable metrical ingenuity, and is 
the best rendering of the poem into English verse. 

Walt Whitman,^ as a native and resident of the 
Middle States, may be spoken of in connection with the 
Pennsylvania group. On the side of his father, a 
farmer and carpenter, he was descended from John 
Whitman, who came to Massachusetts about the year 
1640; his mother, the daughter of a Quakeress, was of 
Dutch origin. He received only a common-school edu- 
cation, but as a lad was an omnivorous novel-reader, and 
revelled in Scott's poetry and The Arabian Nights. 

1 Stedman's Poets of America, p. 406. 

2 Life. Bom at West Hills, Long Island, May 31, 1819. Lived in 
Brooklyn, 1824-1833 (?) ; printer in New York, 1836-1837; then taught 
country schools for two or three years ; published a weekly paper at 
Huntington, L.L, 1839-1840; in New York and Brooklyn as printer and 
writer, 1840-1849, editing the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1 848-1849. Jour- 
neyed through the West and South, 1849, serving on the editorial staif of 
the New Orleans Daily Crescent for a short time ; returned by the Great 
Lakes and Canada. Lived several years in New York and Brooklyn as 
carpenter, printer, editor, and author. Frequented the army hospitals, 
1863-1865. Held government clerkships in Washington, 1865-1874. 
Stricken with paralysis, went to Camden, N.J., to live, 1874. Visited 
Colorado and St. Louis, 1879. Died at Camden, March 26, 1892. 

Works. Leaves of Grass, 1855; the subsequent editions, 1856, 
i860, 1867, 1871, 1876, 1881, 1882, contain many changes and additions. 
Drum Taps, 1865. Passage to India, 1870. Democratic Vistas, 1870. 
Memoranda during the War, 1875. Specimen Days and Collect, 1882. 
November Boughs, 1888. Good-bye, My Fancy, 1891. 



266 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

"Later," he says, "... I used to go off . • . down 
in the country, or to Long Island's seashores — there, in 
the presence of outdoor influences, I went over thor- 
oughly the Old and New Testaments, and absorbed 
. . . Shakspere, Ossian, the best translated versions 
I could get of Homer, ^schylus, Sophocles, the old 
German Nibelungen, the ancient Hindoo poems, and 
one or two other masterpieces, Dante's among them. 
As it happened, I read the latter mostly in an old 
wood. '• ^ His chief love, however, was for nature and for 
the life that surged around him in Brooklyn and New 
York. He had a "passion for ferries," and was hail- 
fellow-well-met with the burly tribe of omnibus drivers 
along Broadway, The "leisurely journey and working 
expedition " of eight thousand miles, which, as a printer 
and journalist, he made through the West, South, and 
North, in the prime of his manhood, gave him a wide 
knowledge, at first hand, of the masses of the American 
people. With the Civil War began a new epoch in his 
life. His services as a volunteer army nurse, in the 
course of which he went " among from eighty thousand 
to a hundred thousand of the wounded and sick," were 
unique and of great value, especially, as he himself says, 
" in the simple matters of personal presence, and ema- 
nating ordinary cheer and magnetism."^ His health, 
superb as it was, broke down under the strain before the 
war ended, and it was never fully restored. Partial 
paralysis finally compelled him to resign his government 
clerkship; and the remainder of his days he spent chiefly 
in his quiet New Jersey home, half an invalid, and some' 

1 A Backward Glance o'er Travelled Roads. 

2 Specimen Days, 



WALT WHITMAN. 267 

times dependent upon the willing help of friends for the 
supply of his simple wants. He continued to write 
poetry and prose, getting inspiration for some of it from 
a second trip to the West. Occasionally he went up the 
Hudson to visit John Burroughs, and he called upon 
Longfellow and Emerson the year before they died. 
Ten years later "the Good Gray Poet"^ himself passed 
away. 

Two great facts underlie Whitman's poetry. The first 
is Democracy in America. " It seemed to me . . . the 
time had come," he says, "to reflect all themes and 
things, old and new, in the lights thrown on them by the 
advent of America and democracy." Democracy is to 
him Equality, first of all, — ^ " giving others the same 
chances and rights as myself."^ Next, it is Comrade- 
ship, "in a more commanding and acknowledged 
sense than hitherto."^ And the goal of it all is 
"the forming of myriads of fully developed indi- 
viduals,"^ for he believed that "the crowning growth 
of the United States is to be spiritual and heroic."^ 

A great city is that which has the greatest men and women, 
If it be but a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the 
whole world .'^ 

His thought about the relation of the democratic 
present to the feudal past is equally broad and just: 
" America fully and fairly construed . . . is the legiti- 
mate result and revolutionary outcome of the past";^ 
" ere the New World can be worthily original . . . she 

1 The phrase is W. D. O'Connor's, in his vindication of Whitman in 
1866. 

2 A Backward Glance o'er Travelled Roads. 

* Thought ^ in By the Roadside, 4 Song of the Broad- Axe, 



268 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

must be well saturated with the originality of others."^ 
He was keenly aware of our present shortcomings : " I 
say that our New World democracy, however great a 
success in uplifting the masses out of their sloughs, in 
materialistic development, products, and in a certain 
highly deceptive, superficial, popular intellectuality, is, 
so far, an almost complete failure in its social aspects, 
and in really grand religious, moral, literary, and esthetic 
results."^ Yet he was hopeful for the future, believing 
that although "democracy's first instincts are fain . . . 
to reduce everything to a dead level,'' yet "the new 
influences, upon the whole, are surely preparing the way 
for grander individualities than ever."^ 

His method of giving literary expression to democracy 
is, first of all, to portray himself, "faithfully" and "un- 
compromisingly," as one representative American, "the 
born child of the New World." 

One's-Self I sing, a simple separate person, 

Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.* 

But he also ranges, in thought, over the continent, 
and paints all sorts and conditions of men, in masses, 
on a large canvas with broad sweeps of the brush. The 
intellect and culture of America, however, receive little 
attention; he was attracted chiefly to common men and 
women, and to rough, hardy life in the open air. The 
scenes of the Civil War, as a tremendous expression of 

1 specimen Days ; a quotation, with approval, of what he had heard 
Longfellow say. 

2 Democratic Vistas. 

3 A Backward Glance o'er Travelled Roads. 

4 One's-Self I Sing. See also Starting from Paumanok and Son^ 
of Myself, 



WALT WHITMAN. 269 

the best life of the Republic, supplied him with many 
subjects; while the death of Lincoln, the great American 
commoner, was the inspiration of two of his noblest 
poems. ^ Whatever the subject, there appears constantly 
a great faith in democracy and the worth of the common 
man. In his own rougher way, Whitman preaches 
Emerson's doctrine of self-reliance:^ — 

We have had ducking and deprecating about enough, 
I show that size is only development. 
Have you outstript the rest ? are you the President ? 
It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there, every one, and 
still pass on.^ 

The second great influence upon Whitman's poetry was 
Science. According to his light he put into practice the 
creed of the scientist that whatever is natural is right : — 

Of physiology from top to toe I sing.* 

I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to be the 
poet of wickedness also,^ 

Give me the dtench of my passions, give me life coarse and rank.^ 

The poems which elaborate the ideas expressed in 
these lines have exposed Whitman to the charge of in- 
decency; but his error was intellectual and aesthetic 
rather than moral. He lacked that delicacy which 
would have taught him that some things are less beauti- 
ful if dragged into broad day; and his conception of 

1 O Captain, My Captain and When Lilacs last in the Dooryard 
Bloomed. See also Co7ne up from the Fields , Father ; Vigil Strange I 
Kept ; and First, O Songs, for a Prelude. 

2 Emerson recognized in Whitman a semi-disciple, and publicly wel- 
comed Leaves of Grass, although he did not approve of its coarser parts 

8 Song of Myself 4 Ones-Self I Sing. 

S Song of Myself ^ Native Moments, 



270 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

nature was too narrow, for he did not see that restraint, 
delicacy, and silence are as natural as appetite, frank- 
ness, and speech. But in justice it should be added 
that his protest against mere prudery needed to be made 
and is in accord with one of the most wholesome influ- 
ences of physical science, and that he has said noble 
things about woman, particularly in this picture of his 
mother : — • 

Behold a woman ! 

She looks out from her Quaker cap, her face is clearer and more 

beautiful than the sky. 
She sits in an armchair under the shaded porch of the farmhouse, 
The sun just shines on her old white head. . . . 
The melodious character of the earth, 
The finish beyond which philosophy cannot go and does not wish 

to go. 
The justified mother of men.^ 

Whitman asserts with power the divinity of common 
things, helping one to realize the sacredness of our 
bodies and the marvel and mystery of the meanest work 
of the Creator : — 

And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, . . . 
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.^ 

If anything is sacred the human body is sacred, 
And the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood un- 
tainted.^ 

The Other scientific doctrine that profoundly affected 
Whitman is Evolution, which he accepted in its most 
comprehensive sense as an inevitable and never-ending 
upward movement of the whole universe. Death is 
only transition, one of many steps in the eternal 
progression : — 

1 Faces. 2 Song of Myself » 3 / sing the Body Electric, 



WALT WHITMAN. 271 

If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces, 

were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not 

avail in the long run. 
We should surely bring up again where we now stand, 
And surely go as much farther, and then farther and farther. . . . 
This day before dawn I ascended a hill and looked at the crowded 

heaven, 
And I said to my spirit. When we become the enf aiders of those orbs, 

and the pleasure and knowledge of everything in them^ shall 

we be filled and satisfied then ? 
And my spirit said, No^ we but level that lift to pass and continue 

beyond?- 

Whitman rejected rhyme, metre, and other conven- 
tional poetic embellishments, that he might make the 
very form of his message reflect the novelty of its spirit, 
although he had profound admiration for the great 
poems of the past, standing before them, he says, "with 
uncovered head, fully aware of their colossal grandeur 
and beauty."^ He felt, also, that for him, at least, 
writing upon the great primal facts of nature and human 
life in a crude New World, the large freedom of his 
lines was a more sincere and adequate mode of expres- 
sion than regular metres and honeyed rhymes.^ But 
the amount of music in Whitman's verse is usually 
underrated. As the passion rises, the style also rises, 

1 Song of Myself. See Out of the Cradle Endlessly Ro eking, iSi^x^osX 
beautiful of his longer poems, and When Lilacs last in the Dooryard 
Bloomed, for thoughts about death. 

2 A Backward Glance o'er Travelled Roads. His early study of 
Ossian no doubt affected him. Among his Pieces in Early Youth 
(see the complete prose works), Blood-Money and Wounded in the 
House of Friends are written in irregular, unrhymed lines, and seem 
transitional to the manner of Leaves of Grass. Of the latter he says, 
with unconscious naivete, " I had great trouble in leaving out the stock 
'poetical ' touches, but succeeded at last." — Specimen Days, 

3 See Spirit that fortned This Scene, 



272 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

oftentimes into a magnificent free rhythm and a large 
melody, as in these lines upon Lincoln's funeral train : — 

With the pomp of the inlooped flags, with the cities draped in 

black, 
With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veiled women 

standing, . . . 
With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising 

strong and solemn, 
With all the mournful voices of the dirges poured around the 

coffin, 
The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs — where amid 

these you journey, 
With the tolling, tolling bells' perpetual clang, 
Here, coffin that slowly passes, 
I give you my sprig of lilac.^ 

Whitman's diction is usually idiomatic and strong; not 
infrequently, however, it becomes labored and affected.^ 
He had almost no structural power, and his longer poems 
are mere heaps. But in the word, phrase, and paragraph 
he showed a remarkable descriptive gift, his pictures 
pressing almost bodily upon the eye.^ His feeling for 
humanity was broad, deep, and robust, if not of the 
finest texture.^ In ranging through past, present, and 
future, his imagination sometimes takes a high as well 
as a wide flight, notably in Passage to India, Prayer of 

1 When Lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloomed. See the whole poem 
for rhythms of various kinds, admirably fitted to the thought or feeling. 
Also Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking ; With Husky- Haughty Lips ^ 
O Sea ; and many more. 

2 Emigre, longeve, deific, morbific, har binge, arriere, philosophs^ eleve, 
and similar words occur. 

3 See Cavalry Passing a Ford, A Paumanok Picture, and Song of 
Myself 

4 See Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, The City Dead-House, The Wound' 
Dresser ^ The Singer in the Prison^ You Felons on Trial in Courts^ 



HUMORISTS AND ORATORS. 273 

Columbus^ and The Mystic Tru77ipeter, As a poet of 
nature, especially of vast areas, the night, and the sea, 
he is superb in untamed energy and large, elemental, 
impassioned imagination. Other American sea-poems 
seem puny in comparison with Patrolling Barnegat, To 
the Man-of' War Bird, and With Husky- Haughty Lips, 
O Sea, 

It is extravagant to call Walt Whitman a great thinker 
or seer. He lacked spiritual refinement, and he did not 
know enough; there was in him, at least in earlier years, 
something of the rowdy, and his "robustness" is partly 
swagger. But he did catch, and give out again with 
peculiar emphasis and sense of reality, some of the 
largest thoughts of his day; and as we read his pages 
we feel the "New Spirit" blowing fresh and strong, if 
somewhat raw, in our faces. To some minds, at least, 
he is immensely suggestive and stimulating. He was 
not a great poet, but he had in him some of the bones 
of one; and he may be accepted as a crude and imper- 
fect prophecy, a hasty first sketch, of the thoroughly 
great American poet who is yet to be. 

Other classes of literary works in this period may be 
treated briefly, because they either are of small worth or 
do not belong strictly to the realm of pure literature. 

The Humorists deserve mention, but little more. 
The Life and Sayings of Mrs, Partington (1845), by 
Benjamin P. Shillaber (1814-1890), contains good 
sense and knowledge of human nature as well as con- 
siderable genuine humor. Henry W. Shaw (1818- 
1885), \n Josh Billifigs : His Book (1866), relied in part 
upon misspelling for his humor, but some of his epi- 

T 



274 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

grams are really witty and shrewd. The Nasby Papers 
(1864), of David R. Locke {1^2,3-1^^^), by their 
humorous satire did effective work for the Union cause. 
Charles F. Browne ("Artemus Ward") (1834-1867) 
owed his success as a lecturer in the United States and 
England considerably to his manner, which was irre- 
sistibly solemn; but His Book (1863), Travels (1865), 
and In London (1867) are full of "horse" sense and 
real humor of the broad type. These humorists, and 
their like, are, however, no more "American" than 
Irving, Lowell, and Holmes. 

The Orators deserve a volume to themselves, for this 
was the golden age of American oratory ^s well as of 
American poetry and fiction. Among the pulpit orators 
three were preeminent. William E. Channing (1780- 
1842), the leader of the conservative Unitarians, won the 
souls of men by the sweetness of his spirit and the calm 
clearness of his thought and style. Theodore Parker 
(1810-1860), a more radical Unitarian, was a trumpeter 
who loved to sound the call to battle against superstition 
and slavery, and loud, piercing, strepitant was his note. 
A far greater orator than either was Henry Ward 
Beecher (1813-1887), of leonine aspect, who "mobbed 
mobs " in England, and compelled a hearing there for 
the Union side in the early days of the Civil War; 
for many years he poured forth from the pulpit of 
" Plymouth Church '^ sermons brilliant in thought, full 
of poetic beauty, rich and warm with the love of God 
and man. In Congress, during the second quarter of 
the century, wrestled three giants. John C. Calhoun 
(i 782-1850), of South Carolina, was perhaps unequalled 
in debate — cold, keen, logical, quick to see the joint 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 275 

in his opponent's armor, and pitiless in thrusting in the 
lance. The . constitutional argument for the right of 
secession received its perfection at his hands. Henry 
Clay (1777-1852), senator from Kentucky, had less 
logical grip but more charm. His personal magnetism 
was great, and hence his most memorable work was per- 
suading hostile factions into various compromises upon 
slavery. His speeches have not stood well the test of cold 
print. Daniel Webster ^ is America's greatest orator, 
and one of the great orators of the world. His majestic 
presence, his coal-black eyes glowing under cavernous 
brows, his tremendous energy, his massive brain, and 
his large utterance, all proclaimed him a born king of 
men; and for years, despite the immorality of his private 
life, he was the idol of New England, her chosen spokes- 
man in Congress and on impressive public occasions. His 
first great speech was his argument in the famous Dart- 
mouth College case; other men have surpassed him in 
legal erudition, but for combination of eloquence with 
mastery of the broad principles of law he is still our 

1 Life. Born at Salisbury, N. H., Jan 18, 1782; descended from 
Thomas Webster, of Scotch ancestry, who settled in New Hampshire in 
1636 ; graduated at Dartmouth College, 1801 ; admitted to the bar, 1805 ; 
for several years practised law in Portsmouth ; married, 1808 ; represen- 
tative from New Hampshire, 1813-1815; removed to Boston, 1816; 
representative from Massachusetts, 1823-1827 ; senator from Massachu- 
setts, 1827-1841 ; married a second time, 1829 ; secretary of state, 1841- 
1843; senator from Massachusetts, 1845-1852 ; died at Marshfield, Mass., 
Oct. 24, 1852. 

Orations. Dartmouth College case, 1818. Plymouth oration, 1820. 
Address at the laying of the corner-stone of Bunker Hill Monument, 
1825. Funeral oration on Adams and Jefferson, 1826. Reply to Hayne, 
1830. Argument in the White murder case, 1830. Address at the com- 
pletion of Bunker Hill Monument, 1843. Seventh of March speech 
1850. Etc. 



276 THE LITERATURE FROM 1815 to 1870. 

greatest lawyer, although Rufus Choate (1799-1859) 
had more brilliancy of an erratic sort. Webster's fame 
as an "occasional " orator rests upon his Plymouth ora- 
tion, the two Bunker Hill Monument orations, and the 
oration upon Adams and Jefferson; it is sufficient praise 
to say that he made great occasions greater by his pres- 
ence and words. His eloquence reached its height 
in his speeches in the United States Senate, above all 
in the reply to Hayne, which remains the supreme con- 
stitutional and historical argument for national unity. 
Twenty years later, by his Seventh of March speech, he 
lost the confidence of the North, which accused him of 
"selling out to the South " through ambition to be Presi- 
dent, a verdict which the cooler judgment of a later gen- 
eration has seen reason to reverse. The eloquence of 
Webster was of the stately, massive type, carrying in its 
bosom a deep glow of conviction and large passion; his 
style is plain and strong, often sonorous, sometimes 
heavy; his thought, clear and logical; the total effect, 
Olympian. His mind was, however, of limited range 
compared with that of Cicero or Burke, and had 
less flexibility and richness; his one great idea was the 
Union, as the means of preserving and enlarging the 
splendid inheritance bequeathed to us by the founders 
of the Republic. The typical academic orator of this 
period was Edward Everett (1794-1865), Congress- 
man, governor of Massachusetts, minister to England, 
and president of Harvard College; he was elegant in 
manner, finished though prolix in style, and rather too 
fond of extempore effects carefully prepared. Abraham 
Lincoln (1809-1865), a great debater, as his campaign 
struggle with Stephen A. Douglas (1813-1861) proved. 



THE HISTORIANS. 277 

has left one masterpiece of brief, pregnant political 
oratory, in the purest English, his address at the dedi- 
cation of the Gettysburg monument. Wendell Phillips 
(1811-1884), the great orator of the abolition cause, was 
not a Thor'.s hammer, like Webster, but a Damascus 
blade, graceful, rapid, flashing, with a terrible cutting- 
edge. In sarcasm and invective he was unsurpassed, 
and his presence and style were those of a gentleman 
and an aristocrat. His exaggeration, mental reckless- 
ness, and comparative poverty of thought, however, 
prevent his printed speeches from standing high as lit- 
erature. Webster's successor in the Senate, Charles 
Sumner (1811-1874), of cold and egotistic personality 
but of high principles and stainless integrity, in his 
somewhat labored orations also fought a courageous 
fight for freedom and national honor. George W. 
Curtis (1824-1892), whose charming essays and other 
writings merit more than this passing reference, in his 
political, anniversary, and biographical addresses pre- 
sented a rare combination of the orator, man of letters, 
and "scholar in politics." 

The works of several Historians have so much literary 
merit that they cannot be passed by wholly without 
mention here. William H. Prescott (1796-1859), in 
spite of partial blindness, produced memorable histories; 
Ferdinand and Isabella (1837), The Conquest of Mexico 
(1843), ^^d The Conquest of Peru (1847), dealing with 
some of the most romantic events in the world's annals, 
combine much patient labor with a luminous and enter- 
taining style. The History of the United States ^^ by 

1 In ten volumes, appearing seriatim in 1834, 1837, 1840, 1852, 1853, 
1854, 1858, i86q 1866, 1874 ; revised edition, in six volumes, 1883-1885. 



2^Z THE LITERATURE FROM 1870 to 1900. 

George Bancroft (1800-1891), secretary of the navy, 
and minister to Great Britain and Germany, has less 
charm of manner, and the earlier volumes are marred 
by a somewhat turgid Americanism; but it embodies an 
immense amount of careful labor and research. John 
LoTHROP Motley (1814-1877), minister to Austria and 
England, is the most dramatic of our historians, like 
Carlyle laying much emphasis upon great personalities 
and their influence in shaping history; The Rise of the 
Dutch Republic (1865) and The History of the United 
Netherlands (i 860-1 868) are more brilliant in style 
than Bancroft's writings, and deeper than Prescott's. 
Francis Parkman (1823-1893), in spite of an affection 
of the eyes, wrote voluminously ^ and with great thor- 
oughness upon the discovery of the West by early ex- 
plorers and upon the struggle between Great Britain and 
France for supremacy in North America; his style, 
though perhaps too high-colored at times, is pictur- 
esque and powerful, and his books are nothing less than 
fascinating. All these historians were of New England 
birth, and contributed in no small degree to the literary 
preeminence of that section during the period to which 
they belonged. 

3. THE LITERATURE FROM 1870 to 1900. 

The time has not yet come to discuss in detail the 
writings of authors whose literary activity falls wholly or 

1 The California and Oregon Trail, 1849. The History of the Con- 
spiracy of Pontiac, 185 1. Pioneers of France in the New World, 1865. 
The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century, 1867. La 
Salle : or the Discovery of the Great West, 1869. The Old Regime in 
Canada, 1874. Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV., 
1877. Montcalm and Wolfe, 1884. Etc. 



GENERAL CONDITIONS. 279 

chiefly within the last thirty years of the nineteenth 
century. An indication of general tendencies and a 
tentative appraisal of the more conspicuous or more 
representative writers are all that can now be justly 
attempted. - 

Since the close of the Rebellion the population and 
wealth of the nation have advanced at a prodigious pace. 
Immigration on an immense scale and the natural in- 
crease of a prolific people have caused the cities of the 
East and Centre to grow very rapidly and have covered 
the vast West and Northwest with a hardy, industrious 
population, so that the census for 1900 will doubt- 
less show a total of more than seventy million inhab- 
itants. The national wealth is now reckoned in many 
biUions of dollars, much of it still in the hands of the 
masses, although multi-millionaires are numerous and 
plutocracy is a growing menace. The Centennial Ex- 
position of 1876 and the Columbian Exposition of 1893 
were mammoth ledgers in which were "writ large " the 
records of the nation's colossal business at home and 
abroad. Politically, the salient facts of the generation 
have been the rise of the New South, without slavery; 
the increased venality in public life, especially in large 
cities, accompanied by an encouraging reaction on the 
part of the best elements in American society against 
this vice of prosperous republics; the steady growth in 
the strength and prestige of the national government at 
the expense of the state governments; the admission of 
several territories to statehood; and, as a result of the 
war with Spain, the acquisition of an extensive archi- 
pelago in the Old World, with the new foreign policy 
which these possessions and our rapidly increasing ex- 



28o THE LITERATURE FROM 1870 to 1900. 

port trade necessarily involve. Wisely or unwisely, the 
United States has stepped out of its century-long isola- 
tion into the larger politics of the world; ever to step 
back again seems impossible, and our new world-rela- 
tions must sooner or later exert a powerful influence, for 
good or for ill, upon the national life and literature. 
Meanwhile, many tendencies of the time are clearly 
making toward a higher civilization. The practical 
applications of science, electricity in particular; im- 
provements in diet, dress, and sanitation; the athletic 
spirit, driving the student and the rich man's sons and 
daughters into healthful sports in the open air; the 
magnificent endowments of great universities, which, 
borrowing elements from both the English and the Ger- 
man systems, are working toward an educational ideal 
perhaps superior to either and certainly better adapted 
to American conditions; the rise of a noble architecture, 
more especially in churches, university buildings, and 
public libraries; the growth of the taste for art and of 
promising schools of artists; the efforts of thoughtful 
men in all our churches to readjust religious habitudes 
to the needs of modern times, — all this means much for 
the health, intelligence, charm, and spirituality of 
American life and literature in the twentieth century. 
Although we have no authors equal in caliber to 
the greater writers of the middle of the century, the 
average of talent and the standard of workman- 
ship are higher than ever before. The number of 
men and women who can write excellent fiction and 
finished verse is surprisingly large, and the literary 
quality of our best magazines would do credit to 
any period of English literature. A second conspic- 



GENERAL LITERARY TENDENCIES. 281 

uous fact IS the preeminence of the Short Story. The 
reasons for the popularity of this form of prose fic- 
tion throughout the modern world are apparent. Books 
are cheap, the reading habit is general, the mass of 
readers want easy reading, and short stories require even 
less mental effort than novels. Our ancestors had leisure 
for Clarissa Harlow e ; we live on the jump, and need 
something short enough to be read between jumps. The 
same high tension of life has begotten, furthermore, a 
semi-artistic impatience of padding and dawdling. All 
these conditions reach their extreme in America, which 
has, therefore, naturally made the short story peculiarly 
its own. Still another large feature of contemporary 
American literature, in prose and verse, is Realism. 
This also is a general tendency of modern times, spring- 
ing from the scientific temper with its passion for accu- 
racy and truth and its belief that there is nothing more 
wonderful or worthy of study than the common things 
that lie all about us. American realism, however, 
although it has been strongly influenced by European, 
particularly by French and Russian, has freely utilized 
the romantic materials of life in the South and West; 
and in a country where Anglo-Saxon ideas of morality 
still rule, and the "Young Person" reads the same lit- 
erature that adults read, even realistic fiction has neces- 
sarily avoided certain phases of the realism of Zola 
and Tolstoi. Finally, much of recent American litera- 
ture has a distinctive flavor, because, while it is more 
cosmopolitan than ever before in the sense of being open 
to world-wide influences, its material is American and 
even provincial. Local conditions in North, South, 
and West have been studied as through a microscope, 



282 THE LITERATURE FROM 1870 to 1900. 

and scenery, customs, character, dialect, legends, super- 
stitions, and neighborhood history have been portrayed 
with truth, freshness, and power. This is, of course, in 
part the result of the spirit of realism, which finds its 
literary material in the common and near. The demand 
for short stories has tended in the same direction, neigh- 
borhood life furnishing many incidents admirably 
adapted for such handling although quite insufficient 
for long novels. The lack of a literary metropolis, which 
should be to the United States what London is to Great 
Britain and Paris to France, has also favored diversity 
in matter and manner. New England has lost what pre- 
eminence it had. Our men of letters work each by 
himself or in literary centres far apart in space and 
widely different in traditions and temper. The disad- 
vantages of this state of things are obvious; but the 
advantages, in cultivating independence and originality, 
and in allowing many sides of our diversified life and 
many kinds of talent to manifest themselves in litera- 
ture, are probably greater at this stage of our artistic 
development. We are in effect carrying on a series of 
experiments on a large scale; in some of these literary 
laboratories scattered over the land may be discovered 
the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. At all 
events, if we are ever to have a more unitary literature, 
an expression of the life of the nation as a whole, these 
preliminary studies of its constituent parts will be of 
great value. To these causes should be added an in- 
creased feeling of independence, the natural result of 
maturity and rapidly expanding power. We care rela- 
tively less for the censure or the approval of Europe; 
without the swagger and shallow conceit which, in the 



NORTHERN WRITERS. 283 

heyday of our national youth, went hand in hand with 
excessive sensitiveness to foreign opinion, we are now 
rather amused than irritated by Old World condescen- 
sion, feeling that if we have much to learn we also have 
somewhat -to teach. Emerson's words may now be 
changed into the present tense: we walk on our own 
feet; we work with our own hands; we speak our own 
minds. ^ 

Among contemporary Northern writers Thomas B. 
Aldrich (1836- ) is deservedly prominent. He is 
the author of one of the most charming and wholesome 
boys' books ever written; his short stories are very 
bright, and touch life on many sides; the novels are less 
successful, although they have the author's unfailing 
vivacity and finish. Mr. Aldrich' s verse is as faultless 
in technique as Tennyson's, and shows a Keats-like 
love of sensuous beauty; but it lacks originality and 
largeness of imagination. The poems of Edmund C. 
Stedman (1833- ) have finish and restrained force, 
with fine humor, fancy, and feeling; as a whole they 
can never be popular, although a few of the spirited 
war lyrics have gained a wide hearing. Mr. Stedman' s 
later work has been chiefly literary criticism, for which 
he is singularly fitted by his wide knowledge, fine yet 
catholic taste, and judicial temper. William D. 
HowELLS (1837- ), our foremost novelist resident 
in America, under the influence of Tolstoi has travelled 
far along the road of realism and social reform. He 
has a remarkable gift at so portraying half-unconscious 
meanness or weakness of character that the reader is 
made aware of similar tendencies in himself and thop 
1 See pp. 202-203. 



284 THE LITERATURE FROM 1870 to 1900. 

oughly ashamed of them. All Mr. Howells's work is 
characterized by thoughtfulness, keen observation of 
human nature, and literary neatness and point; but it 
will not be surprising if his rather depressing realistic 
studies are outlived by his more beautiful earlier sketches 
and by his charming little farces. Henry James 
(1843- ), who has long lived abroad, writes much 
upon the American in Europe. In his own way he also 
is a realist, analyzing character and motives with great 
precision and subtlety; his portraits have the fineness 
and microscopic finish of a steel engraving; his style is 
quietly vivacious, and abounds in happily turned phrases; 
but one cannot read long in James without wishing for 
broader horizons and a freer stride. Of the numerous 
other Northern writers of fiction mention can be made 
of only a few: Edward E. Hale (1822- ), some of 
whose stories have long been classic; Frank R. Stock- 
ton (1834-1902), with his pleasant knack at getting 
his characters into ludicrous situations by a series of 
perfectly natural steps; Elizabeth Phelps Ward 
(1844- ), who cannot be other than bright, femi- 
nine, and intense; Mary E. Wilkins (1862- ), a sure- 
handed water-color painter of the more neutral tints in 
New England life; and the versatile S. Weir Mitchell 
(1829- ), author of a successful novel on the Ameri- 
can Revolution. Among the essayists, Charles D. 
Warner (1829-1900), of refined yet vigorous humor and 
easy familiarity with m.en and things, and Agnes Rep- 
PLIER (1855- ), whose piquant satire amuses if it does 
not convince, write what is readable, which is a good 
deal to say of essays. John Burroughs (1837- ), 
a more polished but tamer Thoreau, knows nature 



WESTERN WRITERS. 285 

minutely, and his sketches are charming and restful. 
The minor poets are legion; Richard H. Stoddard 
(1825-1903), Lucy Larcom (1826-1893), Emma Laz- 
arus (1849-1887), John B. O'Reilly (1844-1890), 
Celia L. Thaxter (1835-1894), and Louise C. Moulton 
may be named as representative. A rarer vein is that 
of Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), whose condensed 
little poems on nature and life startle and stab by their 
erratic originality of thought and phrase. Edward R. 
Sill (1841-1887), a native of New England although 
long resident in the West, had high poetic gifts — sweet 
flow of verse, originality in phrase and images, passion 
with spirituality, and fresh, bright beauty in handling 
themes from classic mythology. 

The Western writers have brought into American 
literature much that is breezy and fresh. John Piatt 
(1^35- ) ^^d his wife (1836- ) sing beautifully of 
farm life in the Ohio Valley. John Hay (1838- ) in 
his ballads paints with vigor some of the rougher types 
of Western character. Edward Eggleston (1837- 1902 ) 
in his "Hoosier" novels has drawn vivid pictures 
of the earlier days in Indiana. The poems of James 
W. Riley (1852- ), chiefly in the Hoosier dia- 
lect, are brimful of humor, pathos, human kindliness, 
rich love of nature, and spontaneous lyric melody. 
Maurice Thompson (1844-1901) and Edith Thomas 
(1854- ) have the true wildwood note in their poems 
of nature. Eugene Field (1850-1895) has written a few 
touching child poems. Lewis Wallace (1827- ) is 
the author of several ambitious historical novels, which 
are vivid but too high-colored. Helen H. Jackson 
C'H. H.") (1831-1885), of Eastern birth, a writer of 



286 THE LITERATURE FROM 1870 to 1900. 

beautiful verse, is most widely known by her prose fiction 
on behalf of the Indians. A more voluminous poet than 
any of the preceding is Cincinnatus H. Miller ("Joa- 
quin Miller ") (1841- ), the " Oregon Byron," whose 
poems on life in the far West have fire, color, and dash, 
although they are deficient in sterling poetic worth. 
Francis Bret Harte (1839-1902) has made a brilliant 
reputation in America and Europe by his stories and 
verse, which deal chiefly with incidents and characters 
on the Pacific slope. His pictures of rough mining life, 
in particular, are remarkable for vividness, pathos, and 
revelation of a soul of goodness in men evil. The 
greatest writer of the West is Samuel L. Clemens 
(" Mark Twain ") (1835- ), a native of Missouri, a 
printer, a Mississippi river pilot, a resident of Nevada, 
California, Hawaii, and Hartford, and a traveller in 
many lands. His best work has originality and imagi- 
nation in high degree. His books wholly or chiefly 
humorous contain much that is flat, stale, and unprofit- 
able, although their large vigor and genuine gift of 
broad humor give them vitality. But in those describ- 
ing life on the Mississippi River, he sketches scenery, 
customs, social conditions, and human nature (including 
boy nature) with a large, free, true hand, his humor is 
at its best, and the style flows on with the ease and 
power of the Great River itself. The other group of his 
better works handle historical themes taken from the 
Old World, and reveal an historical imagination and 
a finish of manner hardly to be expected in the author of 
the rougher books. In all, Mr. Clemens is a robust 
American and democrat, perhaps a little *' robustious '* 
at times ; he stands squarely on his own feet, gazes 



SOUTHERN WRITERS. 287 

unabashed upon the wonders of the Old World, and 
shows by some of his powerful pictures how wretched 
was the condition of the common people in days 
idealized by historian and poet. Time will winnow 
much chaff from his pages, but much of great merit will 
remain. 

There is a literary New South, no less than a political 
and industrial one, and the literature which has sprung 
up in that region since the war is not only interesting 
and novel but contains high promise for the future. 
Never before have the beauty, passion, romance, and 
picturesqueness of Southern character and life received 
so noble and diversified expression in letters. Sidney 
Lanier (1842-1881), of Georgia, — soldier, teacher, law 
student, magazine writer, and lecturer on English litera- 
ture at Johns Hopkins University, — is second only to 
Poe among Southern poets. His versification sometimes 
falls into excessive intricacy and mere caprice, and 
his thought occasionally fades away into inarticulate 
dreamery. But these errors are only the defects of his 
virtues. A man of the finest sensitiveness without 
effeminacy, and a skilled musician, he has produced 
dreamy, floating, mist-like, musical effects that are new 
in English verse ; and his feeling for nature, especially 
for wood and marsh life as seen in parts of the South, is 
thoroughly modern in its union of exact observation 
with imaginative subtlety. Lanier had also a keen intel- 
lect, as appears from his original and suggestive books 
on versification and the novel. Had he lived to develop 
his gifts fully, he might have come to be numbered with 
the foremost American poets; as it is he stands only a 
little lower and in a secure place of his own. Fiction, 



288 THE LITERATURE FROM 1870 to 1900. 

particularly the short story, has been the favorite liter- 
ary form of most of the recent Southern writers. 
Frances H. Burnett (1849- ), of English birth 

but a resident of America since girlhood, is famous as 
the creator of Little Lord Fauntleroy. Louisiana life, 
especially among the Creoles, has been realistically yet 
poetically portrayed by George W. Cable (1844- ); 
whether or not his books present the exceptional as the 
usual (as is affirmed), they have enriched our literature 
with pictures full of romance, pathos, and dramatic 
intensity, and they have at least some historical value 
as records of a social regime now vanished forever. 
Richard M. Johnston (t822-« > in a homely and 
humorous way describes admirably sundry typical Georgia 
scenes and characters. Mary N. Murfree, whose pseu- 
donym ("Charles E. Craddock") and masculine style 
at first deceived every one as to her sex, paints life and 
scenery among the mountains of Tennessee with re- 
markable vigor and beauty. Francis H. Smith 
(1838- ) has given an inimitable sketch of one type 
of the Southern gentleman in Colonel Carter of Carters- 
ville. Virginia life glows on the pages of Thomas N. 
Page (1853- ), who depicts with great beauty and 
pathos the relations of old negro servants to "marse" 
and "missis." James L. Allen writes, with a poet's 
sensuousness, of nature and passion in luxuriant Ken- 
tucky. Joel C. Harris (1848- ) has made a per- 
manent contribution to the literature of folklore by his 
charming versions of negro animal-myths as told by 
Uncle Remus. The negro race speaks directly in the 
poems and stories of Paul L. Dunbar (1872- ), who 
is one herald, it may be hoped, of a higher intellectual 



CONCLUSION. 289 

and artistic life for a long-oppressed people. Winston 
Churchill, in his portrait of Richard Carvel and his 
picture of life in Maryland and England in Revolution- 
ary days, has produced one of the finest historical novels 
of the century, in many respects a worthy successor to 
Thackeray's Henry Esmond^ which it somewhat resem- 
bles. 



This imperfect record of three centuries of literature 
in America may profitably conclude with a backward 
glance over the entire tract which has been traversed, and 
with a forecast, necessarily tentative and vague, of that 
which lies yet unrevealed. Upon a broad survey, three 
stages in the historical development of American Htera- 
ture become manifest. The first stage, lasting some two 
hundred years, was that of crude or feeble Imitation of 
English Models. The writings usually had Httle artistic 
merit, and the intrinsic interest of the subject-matter 
grew less rather than greater as the years went on ; there 
was, however, a fairly steady improvement in clearness 
and ease of style. The second stage, extending through 
about two-thirds of the nineteenth century, was preemi- 
nently that of English Culture in American Soil. Barren 
imitation gave place to absorption and free reproduction. 
Distinctively American elements, in style, subject, and 
point of view, also became a larger part of the whole. 
But English Hterary traditions, often those of the eigh- 
teenth century, underlay most of the best American Ht- 
erature of the period. Continental culture also exerted 
a strong influence, the deepest impress being made by 
the poetry and philosophy of Germany. The third stage, 



290 THE LITERATURE FROM 1870 to 1900. 

not yet completed, is one of Transition, Experiment, and 
a New Spirit, a spirit more independent, more bold, some- 
times more rash and crude, but on the whole cherishing 
all that was best in the literary ideals of the past, while 
reaching out, often Mindly, after new sources of power 
and new methods of giving effective expression to the life 
of the Present in America. What will be the final issue 
remains to be seen. The best literature yet produced in 
the New World is that which was dominated by the cul- 
ture of the Old World. But the prophecy may be haz- 
arded that if America ever achieves supreme excellence 
in any form of art, it will be by giving freest and fullest 
expression to her own life. This is not saying that the 
great American poet will write in an obscure dialect and 
the great American novelist confine his studies to pork- 
packers, mining-camps, and ignorant mountaineers. The 
truest Americanism, instead of being limited to what is 
peculiar to America, includes the entire life of the Ameri- 
can people, what they have in common with England, 
Europe, and the world, as well as what they have alone. 
Americanism of this sort may be made the basis of a 
great Hterature ; and such a literature would be appre- 
ciably different from that of any other country, for physi- 
cal conditions, political institutions, and the mingHng of 
many powerful or talented races are combining to pro- 
duce in North America a new type of man. An Ameri- 
can literature which, while courageously welcoming all 
good influences from abroad, at the core remains true, in 
form and spirit, to the Hfe of the Great Republic may yet 
become one of the sublime literatures of the world. 



APPENDIX. 



A. 



EXTRACTS FROM COLONIAL AND REVOLU- 
TIONARY LITERATURE. 

John Smith. 

The Rescue by Pocahontas, 

At last they brought him [Smith] to Meronocomoco, where 
was Powhatan their Emperor. Here more then two hundred 
of those grim Courtiers stood wondering at him, as he had 
beene a monster ; till Powhatan and his trayne had put them- 
selues in their greatest braveries. Before a fire vpon a seat 
like a bedsted, he sat covered with a great robe, made of 
Rarowcun skinnes, and all the tayles hanging by. On either 
hand did sit a young wench of 1 6 or 1 8 yeares, and along on 
each side the house, two rowes of men, and behind them as 
many women, with all their heads and shoulders painted red ; 
many of their heads bedecked with the white downe of 
Birds ; but every one with something : and a great chayne 
of white beads about their necks. At his entrance before the 
King, all the people gaue a great shout. The Queene of 
Appamatuck was appointed to bring him water to wash his 
hands, and another brought him a bunch of feathers, in stead 
of a Towell to dry them : having feasted him after their best 
barbarous manner they could, a long consultation was held, 
but the conclusion was, two great stones were brought before 
Powhatan : then as many as could layd hands on him, dragged 
him to them, and thereon laid his head, and being ready with 
their clubs, to beate out his braines, Pocahontas the Kings 
dearest daughter, when no intreaty could prevaile, got his 
head in her amies, and laid her owne vpon his to saue him 
from death : whereat the Emperour was contented he should 
Hue to make him hatchets, and her bells, beads, and copper. 
— Historie of Virginia^ pp. 48, 49, ed. 1624. 

293 



294 APPENDIX. 

William Byrd. 

The Pilot Louse, 

In the meantime the three commissioners returned out of 
the Dismal [Swamp] the same way they went in, and, having 
joined their brethren, proceeded that night as far as Mr. Wil- 
son's. . . . He told us a Canterbury tale of a North Briton, 
whose curiosity spurred him a long way into this great desert, 
as he called it, near twenty years ago, but he having no com- 
pass, nor seeing the sun for several days together, wandered 
about till he was almost famished ; but at last he bethought 
himself of a secret his countrymen make use of to pilot them- 
selves in a dark day. He took a fat louse out of his collar, 
and exposed it to the open day on a piece of white paper, which 
he brought along with him for his journal. The poor insect, 
having no eyelids, turned himself about till he found the dark- 
est part of the heavens, and so made the best of his way towards 
the north. By this direction he steered himself safe out, and 
gave such a frightful account of the monsters he saw, and the 
distresses he underwent, that no mortal since has been hardy 
enough to go upon the like dangerous discovery. 

The Great Disifial Swajnp. 

Since the surveyors had entered the Dismal, they had laid 
eyes on no living creature : neither bird nor beast, insect nor 
reptile came in view. Doubtless the eternal shade that broods 
over this mighty bog, and hinders the sunbeams from blessing 
the ground, makes it an uncomfortable habitation for anything 
that has life. Not so much as a Zealand frog could endure so 
aguish a situation. It had one beauty, however, that delighted 
the eye, though at the expense of all the other senses : the 
moisture of the soil preserves a continual verdure, and makes 
every plant an evergreen, but at the same time the foul damps 
ascend without ceasing, corrupt the air, and render it unfit for 
respiration. Not even a turkey buzzard will venture to fly 
over it. 

The Early North Carolinians, 

In these sad circumstances, the kindest thing we could do 
for our suffering friends was to give them a place in the Litany. 
Our chaplain, for his part, did his office, and rubbed us up 
with a seasonable sermon. This was quite a new thing to 
our brethren of North Carolina, who live in a climate where 
no clergyman can breathe, any more than spiders in Ireland. 



COLONIAL LITERATURE. 295 

. . . One thing may be said for the inhabitants of that prov- 
ince, that they . . . have the least superstition of any people 
living. They do not know Sunday from any other day, any 
more than Robinson Crusoe did, which would give them a great 
advantage were they given to be industrious. But they keep 
so many Sabbaths every week, that their disregard of the 
seventh day has no manner of cruelty in it, either to servants 
or cattle. — The History of the Dividing Line^ pp. 20, 22, 
ed. 1 841. 

William Bradford. 
The Departure of the Pilgrims from Ley den. 
So they lefte y^ goodly & pleasante citie, which had been 
ther resting place near 12. years; but they knew they were 
pilgrimes, & looked not much on those things, but lift up 
their eyes to y^ heavens, their dearest cuntrie, and quieted 
their spirits. When they came to y® place they found y^ ship 
and all things ready ; and shuch of their freinds as could not 
come with them followed after them, and sundrie also came 
from Amsterdame to see them shipte and to take their leave 
of them. That night was spent with litle sleepe by y^ most, 
but with freindly entertainmente & christian discourse and 
other reall expressions of true christian love. The next day, 
the wind being faire, they w^ente aborde, and their freinds 
with them, where truly dolfall was y^ sight of that sade and 
mournfull parting; to see what sighs and sobbs and praires 
did sound amongst them, what tears did gush from every eye, 
& pithy speeches peirst each harte ; that sundry of y® Dutch 
strangers y* stood on y^ key as spectators, could not refraine 
from tears. Yet comfortable and sweete it was to see shuch 
lively and true expressions of dear and unfained love. But 
y® tide (which stays for no man) caling them away y* were 
thus loath to departe, their Reve^ : pastor falling downe on 
his knees, (and they all with him,) with watrie cheeks corn- 
ended them with most fervente praiers to the Lord and his 
blessing. And then with mutuall imbrases and many tears, 
they tooke their leaves one of an other ; which proved to be 
y^ last leave to many of them. — Of Plimoth Plantation^ pp. 
72, ^i, ed. 1898. 

William Bradford and Edward Winslow. 
The First E^tcounter . 
About midnight we heard a great and hideous cry, and our 
Sentinell called, Arme^ anne. So we bestirred our selues 



296 APPENDIX. 

and shot off a couple of Muskets, and noyse ceased. . . . 
About fiue a clock in the morning wee began to be stirring, 
. . . after Prayer we prepared our selues for brek-fast, and for 
a journey, and it being now the twilight in the morning, it 
was thought meet to carry the things downe to the Shallop. 
. . . Anone, all upon a sudden, we heard a great & strange 
cry, which we knew to be the same voyces, though they 
varied their notes, one of our company being abroad came 
running in, and cryed. They are men^ Indians^ Indians ; and 
withall, their arrowes came flying amongst vs, our men ran out 
with all speed to recover their armes, as by the good Provi- 
dence of God they did. In the meane time, Captaine Miles 
Standish, having a snaphance ready, made a shot, and after 
him another, after they two had shot, other two of vs were 
ready. . . . We called vnto them [those at the shallop] to 
know how it was with them, and they answered, Well, Well, 
every one, and be of good courage. . . . The cry of our 
enemies was dreadfull, . . . their note was after this manner, 
Woath woach ha ha hach woach, . . . There was a lustie 
man and no whit lesse valiant, who was thought to bee their 
Captaine, stood behind a tree within halfe a musket shot of 
vs, and there let his arrowes fly at vs ; . . . he stood three 
shots of a Musket, at length one tooke as he sayd full ayme 
at him, after which he gaue an extraordinary cry and away 
they went all, wee followed them about a quarter of a mile : 
. . . then wee shouted all together two severall times, and 
shot off a couple of muskets and so returned : this wee did 
that they might see wee were not afrayd of them nor dis- 
couraged. ... So after wee had given God thankes for our 
deliverance, wee tooke our Shallop and went on our lour- 
ney, and called this place, The first E7icou?iter. — Journall^ 
pp. 51-54, ed. 1865 (Library of New England History). 

Madam Winthrop. 

A Puritan Love- Letter, 

My most sweet Husband, 

How dearly welcome thy kind letter was to me, I am not 
able to express. The sweetness of it did much refresh me. 
What can be more pleasing to a wife, than to hear of the 
welfare of her best beloved, and how he is pleased with her 
poor endeavors ! I blush to hear myself commended, know- 
ing my own wants. But it is your love that conceives the 
best, and makes all things seem better than they are. I wish 



COLONIAL LITERATURE. 297 

that I may be always pleasing to thee, and that those com- 
forts we have in each other may be daily increased, as far as 
they be pleasing to God. I will use that speech to thee, that 
Abigail did to David, I will be a servant to wash the feet of 
my lord. I will do any service wherein I may please my 
good husband. I confess I cannot do enough for thee ; but 
thou art pleased to accept the will for the deed, and rest con- 
tented. 

I have many reasons to make me love thee, whereof I will 
name two : First, because thou lovest God ; and, secondly, 
because that thou lovest me. If these two were wanting, all 
the rest- would be eclipsed. But I must leave this discourse, 
and go about my household affairs. I am a bad housewife to 
be so long from them ; but I must needs borrow a little time 
to talk with thee, my sweet heart. The term is more than 
half done. I hope thy business draws to an end. It will be 
but two or three weeks before I see thee, though they be long 
ones. God will bring us together in his good time; for 
which time I shall pray. I thank the Lord, we are all in 
health. We are very glad to hear so good news of our son 
Henry. The Lord make us thankful for all his mercies to us 
and ours. And thus, with my mother's and my own best love 
to yourself and all the rest, I shall leave scribbling. The 
weather being cold, makes me make haste. Farewell, my 
good husband ; the Lord keep thee. 

Your obedient wife, 

Margaret Winthrop. 

Groton [England], November 22 [1628]. 

— Winthrop's The History of New England^ Vol. I., Appen- 
dix, p. 353, ed. 1825. 

Thomas Hooker. 

The Traitor at the King^s Court. 

It is with a poore humbled sinner, as it is with a malefac- 
tour or traitor, who is pursued with a Pursuivant. . . . He 
hath offended his Soveraigne, and hee is driven to a stand, 
he cannot procure a pardon, nor hee cannot escape ; therefore 
hee is content to come in, and yeeld his necke to the blocke. 
. . . Then [he] heareth other newes, which saith, if hee 
will but bee humbled before his Maiestie, and come to the 
Court, and importune him for pardon, it is likely that he may 
be pardoned, nay it shall be so. Marry (saith he) that I will 
with all my heart ; and so hee sets forward, and comes to the 



298 APPENDIX. 

Court, . . . And about the Court hee attends, and askes 
for every man that comes forth, Did you not heare the 
King speake of me? . . . At last, the King himselfe lookes 
out at a window, and saith, Is this the Traytor? Yes, this is 
he that hath beene humbled, and lyes at your mercy. Then 
the King calls out and saith. His pardon is drawing, and it is 
comming by and by, and so the King smiles on him. Oh 
then his heart leapes in his breast, and he saith. The Lord 
preserve your grace, I thinke there was never such a mercifull 
Prince knowne in the world. — The Soules Implantation^ 
pp. 189, 190, ed. 1640. 

Nathaniel Ward. 

Sayings of a Puritan Carlyle, 

Either I am in an Appoplexie, or that man is in a Lethar- 
gie, who doth not now sensibly feele God shaking the heavens 
over his head, and the earth under his feet : . . . So that 
little Light of Comfort or Counsell is left to the sonnes of 
men. . . . Sathan is now in his passions . . . ; hee loves 
to fish in royled waters. Though that Dragon cannot sting 
the vitals of the Elect mortally, yet that Beelzebub can fly- 
blow their Intellectuals miserably. * * * He that is willing 
to tolerate any unsound Opinion, that his own may also be 
tolerated, though never so sound, will for a need hang Gods 
Bible at the Devils girdle. * * * I honour the woman that 
can honour her self with her attire : a good Text alwayes de- 
serves a fair Margent : . . . but when I hear a nugiperous 
Gentledame inquire what dresse the Qveen is in this week : 
what the nudiustertian fashion of the Court ; . . . with ^gg*^^ 
to be in it in all hast, what ever it be ; I look at her as the 
very gizzard of a trifle, the product of a quarter of a cypher, 
the epitome of nothing, fitter to be kickt, if shee were of a 
kickable substance, than either honoured or humoured. . . . 
It is no marvell they weare drailes, on the hinder part of their 
heads, having nothing as it seems in the fore-part, but a few 
Squirrills braines, to help them frisk from one ill-favour'd 
fashion to another. * * * No man ever saw a gray haire on 
the head or beard of any Truth, wrinckle, or morphew on its 
face. . . . When Christ whips Market-makers out of his 
Temple, he raises dust : but when hee enters in with Truth 
and Holinesse, he calls for deep silence. — The Simple Cobler 
of Aggawam^ pp. i~2, 8, 24-25, 21, 36, ed. 1647. 



COLONIAL LITERATURE. 299 

Anne Bradstreet. 

Her Child-like Muse. 

My Muse unto a Childe, I fitly may compare, 
Who sees the riches of some famous Fayre; 
He feeds his eyes, but understanding lacks. 
To comprehend the worth of all those knacks; . • 
And thousand times his mazed mind doth wish 
Some part, at least, of that brave wealth was his; 
But seeing empty wishes nought obtaine, 
At night turnes to his Mother's cot againe. 
And tells her tales ; (his full heart over-glad) 
Of all the glorious sights his eyes have had. 
— In honour of Du Bartas, in The Tenth Muse, p. 197, ed. 1650. 

Flowers and Birds, 

The Primrose pale, and azure Violet, 
Among the verdurous Grasse hath Nature set, 
That when the Sun (on's love) the earth doth shine, 
These might as Lace, set out her Garments fine; 
The fearful Bird his little house now builds. 
In trees, and walls, in cities, and in fields. 
The Four Seasons of the Yeare, in The Tenth Muse, p. 57, ed. 
1650. 

Contemplations . 

Some time now past in the Autumnal Tide, 
When Phoebus wanted but one hour to bed, 
The trees all richly clad, yet void of pride, 
Were gilded o're by his rich golden head. 

I heard the merry grashopper then sing, 
The black clad Cricket bear a second part. 
They kept one tune, and plaid on the same string. 
Seeming to glory in their little Art. 

Under the coohng shadow of a stately Elm 

Close sate I by a goodly Rivers side. 

Where gliding streams the Rocks did overwhelm; 

A lonely place, with pleasures dignifi'd. 

I once that lov'd the shady woods so well, 

Now thought the rivers did the trees excel; 

And if the sun would ever shine, there would I dwell 



300 APPENDIX. 

O Time the fatal wrack of mortal things, 
That draws oblivions curtains over kings, 
Their sumptuous monuments, men know them not, 
Their names without a Record are forgot, 
Their parts, their ports, their pomp 's all laid in th' dust, 
Nor wit nor gold, nor buildings scape times rust; 
But he whose name is grav'd in the white stone 
Shall last and shine when all of these are gone. 
— Contemplations i stanzas i, 9, 21, 33, in Several PoemSy ed. 1678c 

Longing for Heaven, 

As weary pilgrim, now at rest, 

hugs with delight his silent nest; 
His wasted limbes, now lye full soft 

that myrie steps, haue troden oft; 
Blesses himself, to think vpon 

his dangers past, and travailes done; . . , 
A pilgrim I, on earth, perplext 

with sinns, with cares, and sorrows vext, 
By age and paines brought to decay, 

and my Clay house mouldring away, 
Oh how I long to be at rest 

and soare on high among the blest. 

— Works y pp. 42j 43, ed. 18670 

Michael Wigglesworth. 

The Day of Doo7n, 

Still was the night, Serene & Bright 

when all Men sleeping lay; 
Calm was the season, & carnal reason 

thought so 't would last for ay. . . . 
So at the last, whilst Men sleep fast 

in their security, 
Surpriz'd they are in such a snare 

as cometh suddenly. 
For at midnight break forth a Light, 

which turn'd the night to day, 
And speedily an hideous cry 

did all the world dismay. . . . 
They rush from Beds with giddy heads, 

and to their windows run. 
Viewing this light, which shines more bright 

then doth the Noon-day Sun. 
Straightway appears (they see't with tears) 

the Son of God most dread; 



COLONIAL LITERATURE. 301 

Who with his Train comes on amain 

to Judge both Quick and Dead. 

****** 
My grace to one is wrong to none : 

none can Elecftion claim 
'Amongst all those their souls that lose, 

none can Rejection blame. 
He that may chuse, or else refuse, 

all men to save or spill, 
May this Man chuse, and that refuse, 

redeeming whom he will. 

****** 
They wring their hands, their caitiff-hands, 

and gnash their teeth for terrour; 
They cry, they roar for anguish sore, 

and gnaw their tongues for horrour. 
But get away without delay, 

Christ pities not your cry; 
Depart to Hell, there may you yell, 

and roar Eternally. 
— The Day of Doom ^ stanzas i, 4, 5, 6, 43, 205, ed. 1715. 

Cotton Mather. 

To his Critics, 

Had not my Heart been Trebly Oak'd and Brass'd for such 
Encounters as this our History may meet withal, I would have 
worn the Silk-worms Motto, Operittir du77i Operatiir^ and 
have chosen to have written Anonymously ; or, as Clauditis 
Salmasitis calls himself Walo Messalimis^ as Ltidovicus Mo- 
lincEiis calls himself LudiomcBiis Colvinus^ as Carolus Scriba- 
7iius calls himself Clartis Bonarscius, . . . Thus I would 
have tried, whether I could not have Anagrammatized my 
Name into some Concealment. . . . Whereas now I freely 
confess, His COTTON MATHER that has written all these 
things. ... It will not be so much a Surprise unto me, if 
I should live to see our Church-History vexed with Anie-mad- 
versions of Calumnious Writers, as it would have been unto 
Virgil^ to read his Bucolicks reproached by the Antibucolica 
of a Na7neless Scribbler. . . . The Writer whom I last 
quoted, hath given us a Story of a young Man in High-Hol- 
boicrn, who being after his death Dissected, there was a 
Serpent with divers Tails, found in the left Ventricle of his 
Heart. I make no question, that our Church-History will 



302 APPENDIX. 

find some Reader disposed like that Writer, with an Heart as 
full of Serpent and Venom as ever it can hold. — Magnalia, 
General Introduction, § 6, ed. 1702. 

The Character of John Cotton, 

He would often say with some regret, after the departure 
of a Visitant, / had rather have given this Man an handful 
of Money ^ than have been kept thus lo7ig out of my Study. . . . 
He was an early Riser^ taking the Morning for the Muses ; 
and in his latter Days forbearing a Supper, he turnM his 
former Supping time, into a Reading, a Thinking, a Praying- 
time. Twelve Hours in a Day he commonly, studied, and 
would call that a Scholar'' s Day. . . . Once ... an humor- 
ous and imperious Brother, following Mr. Cotton home to his 
House, . . . rudely told him, That his Ministry was become 
generally, either dark, or flat : Whereto this meek Man, very 
mildly and gravely, made only this Answer : Both^ Brother., 
it may be., both : Let me have your Prayers that it may be 
otherwise. . . . Another time, when Mr. Cotton had mod- 
estly replied unto one that would much Talk and Crack of 
his Insight into the Revelations : Brother, 1 7nust confess my 
self to want Light in those Mysteries. The Man went home, 
and sent him a Pound of Candles : Upon which Action this 
good Man bestowed only a silent Smile. He would not set 
the Beacon of his Great Soul on fir e, at the landing of such a 
little Cock-boat. — Magnalia, Book III., p. 26, ed. 1702. 

Jonathan Edwards. 

The Sweet Glory of God in Nature. 

After this my Sense of divine Things gradually increased, 
and became more and more lively, and had more of that 
inward Sweetness. The Appearance of every thing was 
altered : there seem'd to be, as it were, a calm, sweet Cast, 
or Appearance of divine Glory, in almost every Thing. God's 
Excellency, his Wisdom, his Purity and Love, seemed to 
appear in every Thing; in the Sun, Moon and Stars; in the 
Clouds, and blue Sky ; in the Grass, Flowers, Trees ; in the 
Water, and all Nature ; which used greatly to fix my Mind. 
I often used to sit & view the Moon for a long time ; and so 
in the Day-time, spent much time in viewing the Clouds & 
Sky, to behold the sweet Glory of God in these Things. — 
The Life of Jonathan Edwards., p. 27, ed. 1765. 



COLONIAL LITERATURE. 303 

Sinners t^ the Hands of an Angry God, 

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one 
holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors 
you, and is dreadfully provoked : his wrath towards you burns 
like fire ; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to 
be cast into the fire ; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have 
you in his sight ; you are ten thousand times more abominable 
in his eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent is in 
ours. ... O sinner ! Consider the fearful danger you are in : 
it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full 
of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that 
God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against 
you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a 
slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about 
it, and ready every moment to singe it and burn it asunder. — 
The Works of President Edwards^ Vol. VII., pp. 170, 171, 
ed. 1830. 

Samuel Sewall. 

A Piiritan'^s Diary. 

Friday May 22nd. 1685, had a private Fast : the Magistrates 
of this town with their Wives here. Mr. Eliot prayed. Mr. 
Willard preached. I am afraid of Thy judgements — Text 
Mother gave. Mr. Allen prayed ; cessation half an hour. 
Mr. Cotton Mather prayed ; Mr. Mather preached Ps. 79, 9. 
Mr. Moodey prayed about an hour and a half; Sung the 79th 
Psalm from the 8th to the End : distributed some Biskets, 
and Beer, Cider, Wine. The Lord hear in Heaven his dwell- 
ing place. * * * Friday, Novl^ 6. . . . Having occasion this 
day to go to Mr. Hayward the Publick Notary -s House, I speak 
to him about his cutting off his Hair, and wearing a Perriwig 
of contrary Colour : mention the words of our Saviour, Can ye 
not make one Hair white or black : and Mr. Alsop's Sermon. 
He alledges. The Doctor advised him to it. * * * Monday, 
Oct. 22 [1688]. Mr. Isaac Walker is buried. . . . Deacon 
Eliot and I led the young widow, and had Scarfs and Gloves. 
The Lord fit me, that my Grave may be a Sweetening place 
for my Sin-polluted Body. * * * April 11^.^ 1692. Went to 
Salem, where, in the Meeting-house, the persons accused of 
Witchcraft were examined ; was a very great Assembly ; 'twas 
awfull to see how the afflicted persons were agitated. . . . 
Augt. 19^1^ 1692. . . . This day George Burrough, John 
Willard, Jn^ Procter, Martha Carrier and George Jacob? 



304 APPENDIX. 

were executed at Salem, a very great impiber of Spectators 
being present. ... All of them said they were inocent, 
Carrier and all. Mr. Mather says they all died by a Right- 
eous Sentence. * * * Nov. 6 [1692]. Joseph threw a knop 
of Brass and hit his Sister Betty on the forhead so as to 
make it bleed and swell ; upon which, and for his playing at 
Prayer-time, and eating when Return Thanks, I whipd him 
pretty smartly. When I first went in (calPd by his Grand- 
mother) he sought to shadow and hide himself from me 
behind the head of the Cradle : which gave me the sorrowfuU 
remembrance of Adam's carriage. * * * Second-Day ; Jan^ 
24. 170I I paid Cap t. Belchar ^8-15-0. Took 24' in my 
pocket, and gave my Wife the rest of my cash £4. 3-8, and 
tell her she shall now keep the Cash ; if I want I will borrow 
of her. She has a better faculty than I at managing Affairs : 
I will assist her ; and will endeavour to live upon my Salary ; 
will see what it will doe. The Lord give his Blessing. * * * 
Feria septima, Apr. 3 [1708]. I went to Cous. Dumer's to 
see his News-Letter : while I was there Mr. Nath^ Henchman 
came in with his Flaxen Wigg; I wish'd him Joy, i.e. 
of his Wedding. I could not observe that he said a Word 
to me ; and generally he turn'd his back upon me, when 
none were in the room but he and L This is the Second 
time I have spoken to him, in vain, as to any Answer from 
him. First was upon the death of his Wife, I cross'd the 
way near our house, and ask'd him how he did: He only 
shew'd his Teeth. * * * 8^ i [1720]. . . . I went to Madam 
Winthrop's just at 3. Spake to her, saying, my loving wife 
died so soon and suddenly, Hwas hardly convenient for me to 
think of Marrying again ; ^ however I came to this Resolution, 
that I would not make my Court to any person without first 
Consulting with her. ... 8!" 6'.^ . . . A little after 6. p.m. I 
went to Madam Winthrop's. . . . Madam seemM to harp 
upon the same string. Must take care of her Children. . . . 
I gave her a piece of Mr. Belcher's Cake and Ginger-Bread 
wrapped up in a clean sheet of Paper. . . . My Daughter 
Judith was gon from me and I was more lonesom — might 
help to forward one another in our Journey to Canaan. ... I 
took leave about 9 aclock. ... 8^: 10*.^ . . . In the Evening 
I visited Madam Winthrop, who treated me with a great deal 
of Curtesy; Wine, Marmalade. ... 8f 12. . . . Madam Win- 
throp's Countenance was much changed from what 'twas on 

1 Mrs. Sewall had died on May 26, only four months before. Judge 
Sewall was now sixty-eight, and Mrs. Winthrop fifty-six. 



COLONIAL LITERATURE. 305 

Monday, look'd dark a^d lowering. ... I got my Chair in 
place, had some ' Converse, but very Cold and indifferent to 
what 'twas before. Ask'd her to acquit me of Rudeness if I 
drew off her Glove. . . . Got it off. . . . I gave her Dr. 
Preston, The Church's Marriage and the Church's Carriage, 
which cost me j6^ . . . Told her the reason why I came 
every other night was lest I should drink too deep draughts 
of Pleasure. She had talk'd of Canary, her kisses were to me 
better than the best Canary. ... 8^ 19. . . . Visited Madam 
Winthrop. . . . Was Courteous to me ; but took occasion 
to speak pretty earnestly about my keeping a Coach : I said 
'twould cost ^100. per anum: she said twould cost but 
^40. . . . Came away somewhat late. ... S'^ 21. . . . About 
6. a-clock I go to Madam Winthrop's ; Sarah told me her 
Mistress was gon out. . . . She presently order'd me a Fire ; 
so I went in, having Dr. Sibb's Bowels with me to read. . . . 
After a good while and Claping the Garden door twice or 
thrice, she [Mrs. W.] came in. . . . I ask'd when our pro- 
ceedings should be made publick : She said They were like 
to be no more publick than they were already. Offer'd me 
no Wine that I remember. . . . Nov^ 7'^ . . . I went to Mad. 
Winthrop ; found her rocking her little Katee in the Cradle. 
. . . She set me an arm'd Chair and Cusheon ; and so the 
Cradle was between her arm'd Chair and mine. Gave her the 
remnant of my Almonds ; She did not eat of them as before. . . . 
I told her I loved her : . . . She said had a great respect for 
me. ... I did not bid her draw off her Glove as sometime 
I had done. Her Dress was not so clean as sometime it had 
been. Jehovah jireh ! . . . Novy ii^]" Went not to M^ 
Winthrop's. This is the 2? Withdraw. . . . Nov^ 21. . . . 
Madam Winthrop made a Treat for her Children : . . . I 
knew nothing of it ; but the same day abode in the Council 
Chamber for fear of the Rain, and din'd alone upon Kilby's 
Pves and good Beer. — Diary of Samuel Sewall, ed. 1878- 
1882 (Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, Series V., Vols.V.-VII., passim). 

Madam Knight. 

Travelli7ig in Olden Times, 

Monday, Octb'r. y« second, 1704. — About three o'clock 
afternoon, I began my Journey from Boston to New-Haven. 
. . . Mad"^ Billings . . . Very kindly went wyth me to y® 
Tavern, where I hoped to get my guide. And desired the 
Hostess to inquire of her guests whether any of them, would 

X 



3o6 APPENDIX. 

go with mee. But they being tyed by the Lipps to a pewter 
engine, scarcely allowed themselves time to say. . . . Upon 
this, to my no small surprise, son John arrose, and gravely 
demanded what I would give him to go with me ? . . . Well, 
Mr. John, sais I, make your demands. Why, half a pss. 
[piece] of eight and a dram, sais John. I agreed, and gave 
him a Dram (now) in hand to bind the bargain. . . . His 
shade on his Hors resembled a Globe on a Gate post. . . . 
Thus Jogging on with an easy pace, my Guide telling mee it 
was dangero's to Ride hard in the Night, (wh^^ his horse 
had the sence to avoid,) Hee entertained me with the Adven- 
turs he had passed by late Rideing, and eminent Dangers he 
had escaped, so that ... I didn't know but I had mett w^^ 
a Prince disguis'd. ... In about an how'r, or something 
more, after we left the Swamp, we come to Billinges, where I 
was to Lodg. . . . Shee [the landlady's daughter] conducted 
me to a parlour in a little back Lento [lean-to], W^^ was almost 
filPd w*^ the bedsted, w^^ was so high that I was forced to 
climb on a chair to gitt up to y^ wretched bed that lay on it ; 
on w^^ having Stretcht my tired Limbs, and lay'd my head on 
a Sad-colourd pillow, I began to think on the transactions of 
y^ past day. Tuesday, October y^ third, about 8 in the morn- 
ing, I with the Post proceeded forward without observing any 
thing remarkable ; And about two, afternoon. Arrived at the 
Post's second stage, where the western Post mett him and ex- 
changed Letters. Here, having called for something to eat, 
y^ woman bro't in a Twisted thing like a cable, but something 
whiter ; and laying it on the bord, tugg'd for life to bring it 
into a capacity to spread ; w^^ having w^^ great pains accom- 
plished, shee serv'd in a dish of Pork and Cabbage. ... I, 
being hungry, gott a Httle down ; but ... what cabbage 
I swallowed serv'd me for a Cudd the whole day after. . . . 
About Three afternoon went on with my Third Guide, who 
Rode very hard : and having crossed Providence Ferry, we 
come to a River w^^ they Generally Ride thro'. But I dare 
not venture ; so the Post got a Ladd and Cannoo to carry me to 
tother side, and hee rid thro' and Led my hors. The Cannoo 
was very small and shallow, so that when we were in she 
seem'd redy to take in water, which greatly terrified me, and 
caused me to be very circumspect, sitting with my hands fast 
on each side, my eyes stedy, not daring so much as to lodg 
my tongue a hair's breadth more on one side of my mouth 
then tother, nor so much as think on Lott's wife, for a wry 
thought would have oversett our wherey : But was soon put 



COLONIAL LITERATURE. 307 

out of this pain, . . . and Rewarding my sculler, again 
mounted and made the best of our way forwards. — The Jour- 
nals of Madajii Knight^ and Rev, Mr, Buckingham, pp. 9- 
16, ed. 1825. 

Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. 
An Indian Massacre, 
On the tenth of February 1675. [O.S.] Came the Indians 
with great numbers upon Lancaster : Their first coming was 
about Sun-rising ; hearing the noise of some Guns, we looked 
out ; several Houses were burning, and the Smoke ascending 
to Heaven. ... At length they came and beset our own 
house, and quickly it was the dolefullest day that ever mine 
eyes saw. . . . Some in our house were fighting for their 
lives, others wallowing in their blood, the House on fire over 
our heads, and the bloody Heathen ready to knock us on the 
head, if we stirred out. . . . The bullets rattled against the 
House, as if one had taken an handfull of stones and threw 
them. . . . But out we must go, the fire increasing, and 
coming along behind us, roaring, and the Indians gaping 
before us with their Guns, Spears and Hatchets to devour us. 
No sooner were we out of the House, but my Brother in Law 
. . . fell down dead. . . . The bulletts flying thick, one 
went through my side, and the same (as would seem) through 
the bowels and hand of my dear Child in my arms. . . . 
There were twelve killed, some shot, some stab'd with their 
Spears, some knock'd down with their Hatchets. . . . There 
was one who was chopt into the head with a Hatchet, and 
stript naked, and yet was crawling up and down. It is a 
solemn Sight to see so many Christians lying in their blood, 
some here, and some there, like a company of Sheep torn by 
Wolves. All of them stript naked by a company of hell- 
hounds, roaring, singing, ranting and insulting, as if they 
would have torn our very hearts out. — A Narrative of the 
Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson^ pp. 
1-5, Cambridge ed., 1682. 

A Collection of Poems. 

Commencement at Harvard, 

Thus clad, in careless order mixt by chance, 

In haste they both [belles and beaux] along the streets advance; 

'Till near the brink of Charles's beauteous stream, 

They stop, and think the Ungring boat to blame. 



3o8 APPENDIX. 

Soon as the empty skiff salutes the shore, 
In with impetuous haste they clustering pour. 
The men the head, the stern the ladies grace. 
And neighing horses fill the middle space. . . . 
'Till row'd with care, they reach th' opposing side, 
Leap on the shore, and leave the threat'ning tide. 
While to receive the pay the boatman stands, 
And chinking pennys jingle in his hands. 
Eager the sparks assault the waiting cars. 
Fops meet with fops, and clash in civil wars. 
Off fly the wigs, as mount their kicking heels. 
The rudely bouncing head with anguish swells. . . . 
And now thy town ; O Cambridge ! strikes the sight 
Of the beholders with confus'd delight; 
Thy green campaigns wide open to the view, 
And buildings where bright youth their fame pursue. » 
The thing which first the num'rous crowd employs. 
Is by a breakfast to begin their joys. 
While wine, which blushes in a chrystal glass 
Streams down in floods, and paints their glowing face. 
And now the time approaches when the bell. 
With dull continuance tolls a solemn knell. 
Numbers of blooming youth in black array 
Adorn the yard, and gladden all the day. 
In two strait lines they instantly divide. 
While each beholds his partner on th' opposing side, 
Then slow, majestick, walks the learned head, 
The senate follow with a solemn tread. 
Next levi's tribe in reverend order move. 
Whilst the uniting youth the show improve. 
They glow in long procession till they come. 
Near to the portals of the sacred dome. . . . 
The work begun with pray'r, with modest pace, 
A youth advancing mounts the desk with grace, 
To all the audience sweeps a circling bow, 
Then from his lips ten thousand graces flow. 
^ Commencement^ in A Collection of Poems ^ pp. 48-51, ed. 1 744. 

Joseph Green. 

Dr. Byles on his Cat. 

She never thirsted for the chicken's blood; 
Her teeth she only used to chew her food; 
Harmless as satires which her master writes, 
A foe to scratching, and unused to bites, 
She in the study was my constant mate; 
There we together many evenings sate. 



COLONIAL LITERATURE. 309 

Whene'er I felt my towering fancy fail, 
I stroked her head, her ears, her back, and tail; 
And' as I stroked improved my dying song 
From the sweet notes of her melodious tongue : 
Her purrs and mews so evenly kept time, 
She purred in metre, and she mewed in rhyme. 
But,when my dulness has too stubborn proved, 
Nor could by Puss's music be removed. 
Oft to the well-known volumes have I gone, 
And stole a line from Pope or Addison. 
» From Stedman and Hutchinson's A Library of American Litera^ 
ture^ Vol. II., p. 435. 

Thomas Godfrey. 

Jealousy. 

In a dark Corner hell-born Jealousy, 
A Wan and haggard Spright, I did espy; 
Watchful she roll'd her ghastly Eyes around, 
And cautious trod, to catch the whisp'ring Sound : 
Her Heart forever deathless Vultures tear. 
And by her Side stalk Anguish and Despair : 
Curst is the Wretch with her dire Rage possess'd. 
When fancied Ills destroy his wonted Rest. 

— The Court of Fancy .^ p. 23, ed. 1762, 

The Instability of Human Greatness, 

Bethas. True, I am fall'n, but glorious was my fall, 
The day was brav'ly fought, we did our best, 
But victory 's of heav'n. Look o'er yon field, 
See if thou findest one Arabian back 
Disfigur'd with dishonourable wOunds. 
No, here, deep on their bosoms, are engrav'd 
The marks of honour ! 'twas thro' here their souls 
Flew to their blissful seats. Oh ! why did I 
Survive the fatal day? To be this slave. 
To be the gaze and sport of vulgar crouds. 
Thus, like a shackl'd tyger, stalk my round, 
And grimly low'r upon the shouting herd. 
Ye Gods ! . . . 

King. . . . Hence, bear him to his dungeon; 
lysias, we here commit him to thy charge. 

Bethas. Welcome my dungeon, but more welcome death; 
Trust not too much, vain Monarch, to your pow'r, 
Know Fortune places all her choicest gifts 
On ticklish heights, they shake with ev'ry breeze, 



3IO APPENDIX. 

And oft some rude wind hurls them to the ground. 
Jove's thunder strikes the lofty palaces, 
While the low cottage, in humility, 
Securely stands, and sees the mighty ruin. 
What King can boast, to morrow as to-day, 
Thus, happy will I reign? The rising sun 
May view him seated on a splendid throne, 
And, setting, see him shake the servile chain. 
— The Prince of Parthia, I., v., in Juvenile Poems, etc., pp. 120, 
121, ed. 1765. 

Henry Laurens. 
A Noble Spirit in Prison, 
From White Hall, I was conducted in a close hackney coach, 
under the charge of Col. Williamson, a polite, genteel officer, 
and two of the illest-looking fellows I had ever seen. The 
coach was ordered to proceed by the most private ways to the 
Tower. It had been rumored that a rescue would be at- 
tempted. . . . Governor Gore conducted me to my apart- 
ments at a warder's house. As I was entering the house I 
heard some of the people say : '' Poor old gentleman, bowed 
down with infirmities. He is come to lay his bones here." 
My reflection was, *• I shall not leave a bone with you." I 
was very sick, but my spirits were good, and my mind forbod- 
ing good from the event of being a prisoner in London. . . . 
And now I found myself a close prisoner, indeed ; shut up in 
two small rooms, which together made about twenty feet 
square ; a warder my constant companion ; and a fixed bayo- 
net under my window. ... I discovered I was to pay rent 
for my little rooms, find my own meals and drink, bedding, 
coals, candles, etc. This drew from me an observation to 
the gentleman jailer : . . . " Whenever I caught a bird in 
America I found a cage and victuals for it." * * * The 
people around me thought, for a considerable time, my life in 
imminent danger \i.e, because of his illness]. I was of a 
different opinion. ... I asked the warder, " If he could 
lend me a book for amusement? " He gravely asked : '^ Will 
your honor be pleased to have ^Drelincourt upon death'?" 
I quickly turned to his wife, who was passing from making up 
my bed : " Pray, Madam, can you recommend an honest gold- 
smith, who will put a new head to my cane ; you see this old 
head is much worn? " " Yes, sir, I can." The people under- 
stood me, and nothing more was said of ^'•' Drelincourt." * * * 
Monday, 26*^^ February, Mr. Oswald . . . sent me the follow- 



REVOLUTIONARY LITERATURE. 311 

ing message : . . . " Their Lordships say, if you will point 
out anything .for the benefit of Great Britain, in the present 
dispute with the Colonies, you shall be enlarged." ... I 
snatched up my pencil, and upon a sudden impulse wrote a 
note to Mr. Oswald : . . . ^^ I perceive, my dear friend, . . . 
that if I were a rascal, I might presently get out of the Tower 
— I am not.' ... I could point out a doctrine, known to 
every old woman in the kingdom, ' A spoonful of honey will 
catch more flies, than a ton of vinegar.' ..." [Mr. Oswald 
visited him, and said :] '^ I showed the note you lately sent 
me to Lord Germain, who was at first very angry. He ex- 
claimed, ' Rascals ! rascals ! — we want no rascals ! Honey ! 
honey ! I vinegar ! They have had too much honey and too 
little vinegar! They shall have less honey and more vinegar 
for the future ! ' " I said to Mr. Oswald, I should be glad to 
taste a little of his lordship's vinegar; his lordship's honey 
had been very unpleasant. * * * September 23^ — For some 
time past I have been frequently and strongly tempted to 
make my escape from the Tower. ... At length I put a 
stop to farther applications by saying, ^' I will not attempt an 
escape. The gates were opened for me to enter ; they shall 
be opened for me to go out of the Tower. God Almighty 
sent me here for some purpose. I am determined to see the 
end of it." — A N'arrative of the Captivity of Henry Lau- 
rens^ from Stedman and Hutchinson's A Library of American 
Literature^ Vol. III., pp. 109-113. 

The Columbian Magazine. 

Two Literary Coxcombs. 

There are certain species of folly, which, as they are the 
effects of an empty and unnecessary pride, deserve the lash of 
ridicule. ... Of this class, there is one, which cannot but 
be conspicuous both from its absurdity and numbers that are 
addicted to it. I mean, when a person pretends to an entire 
knowledge of those things that he is not at all acquainted 
with. ... I have heard the highest encomiums bestowed 
upon the works of Virgil, by persons who knew not Latin 
from Hebrew ; and Homer idolized by those who could not 
have distinguished Greek from Low Dutch. ... A young 
Gentleman, with whom I have a slight acquaintance, has 
often declared " that for his part, he should doubt the reality 
of a Tritdgi?ig war [Trojan War] . . . did he not think it 
impossible, that Plato's elep;ant and lively description of it 



312 APPENDIX. 

should be fiction, and entirely want foundation." . . . This 
fellow acts upon a large, and, indeed, an unlimited scale, and 
is acquainted with every author, and transaction of note, since 
the time of Adam to the present day. But, I have the honour 
of an acquaintance, with a lady, who, much in the same way, 
pursues a more contracted plan, which she manages with 
great credit. . . . She has selected one work, which has 
happened to be the Spectator^ upon which she lavishes all 
the commendations she has to dispose of, and asserts its 
supremacy among books, without having read more than half 
a dozen pages in it. . . . She is extremely fond of having 
small and sociable parties at her house, at one of which a 
general conversation took place concerning English authors, 
and the precedency of their works. For a short time she was 
silent, and listened to the opinions of the company with more 
patience than I expected from her ; but, at length, after wrig- 
gling and twisting awhile in her chair, she broke forth like a 
torrent, somewhat in this manner : " No, gentlemen, you may 
talk as much as you please of your Popes and your Swifts, 
your Sternes, Steeles, and Addisons, but I insist upon it that 
the Spectator is the finest book that ever was printed in any 
language, or country whatever, and as for our English writers 
there is none of them could ever stand in competition with 
him." ... I shall conclude this paper, . . . with a quota- 
tion from a former number : Reader, " whatsoever thou hast 
observed that arouses thy detestation or contempt, that avoid." 
— The Retailer^ No. V., in The Columbia}! Magazine ^ June, 
1788, pp. 318-323. 

The Providence Gazette. 

A Dream of the Branding of Asses and Horses, 

I must tell you I don't heartily approve of every thing in 
the great man's letter that was in your last paper. — He that 
acknowledges that I am an Englishman, and tells me at the 
same time that I am to live under laws which I have no hand 
in making, and am to be taxed where I have no representa- 
tive, does but mock me. . . . But I found something in his 
letter about a stamping law ; . . . and going to bed full of 
the matter, I had a very odd dream, which, if you please, I 
will relate to you. Methought the stamp law ended in one 
for stamping all our beasts of burthen ; . . . and ... I 
fancied that I saw all the horses of the town brought together 
in a pasture, . . . and amongst them were about half a dozen 



REVOLUTIONARY LITERATURE. 313 

asses, being all we had. Soon after, the master-brander with 
his retinue approached the pasture in great pomp, one carry- 
ing a large silver brand in the form of the letter S and 

upon entering the field, they began with the asses, and branded 
them without the least interruption : They then drew near to 
the horses, and would have laid hold on a stately bay horse, 
but taking fright at the glittering of the brand, he snorted, 
kicked up his heels, and w^ent off; I was sorry to see him 
fling the dirt in the gentleman's face ; and the whole drove 
being struck with the same panic, they leapt the fence, and 
ran off snorting and flinging up their heels. . . . And whilst 
the branding company stared, ... a very ragged country 
fellow said with a facetious grin, that he always understood, till 
then, that the good people of England very well knew that none 
but asses would stand still to be branded. . . . [A] gentleman 
proceeded, and assured the brander that the horses . . . were 
all of the English breed, and the far greater part of them had 
for their sire and were descended from a very remarkable 
horse, known by the name of Old Noll, who though he was 
not a showy beast, was firm, and had courage to the back 
bone, and might have been of great use, but that his master 
fell in love with a huge pair of French spurs, and contrary to 
all good advice, must needs mount Noll, with them upon his 
heels ; but unhappily the horse no sooner felt the spurs at his 
sides, but he gave his master such a fall as broke his neck ; 
upon which the breed were out of credit for a while, and be- 
ing sent hither, multiplied exceedingly. . . . Here the whole 
of our company gave three huzzas, ... in which I joined so 
heartily, that the good woman at my side gave me a hunch 
with her elbow, and asked me if I had the cholic or gripes, 
and so ended my vision. — Anonymoics letter to the editor^ 
Nov. 10, 1764. (From the file of the Gazette in the library 
of the R. I. Hist. Soc.) 

A Cure for the Spleen. 

A Tory View of the Revolution, 

Sharp [a parson]. Your servant squire Bumper, pray walk 
in; how do you do? Btwiper [a justice]. In pretty good 
health, I thank you sir ; how is it with yourself and madam ? 
Sharp. We're moving about, tollerably well, for old folks. 
. . . (Enter to them /^?7//(?/ [an inn-keeper], Graveairs [a 
deacon], and Trim [a barber]). Sharp. Your servant gen- 
Uemen, pray sit down; how do you do deacon.^ Grave, I 



314 APPENDIX. 

thank you revd. sir, this cough has not quite left me yet, — h 

— hugh — h — hugh — h — - hugh — tho' thro' mercy, it is 
much better, h — hugh — h — hugh. Sharp. Pm glad to 
hear it. How do you do landlord? Fill. As well as I can 
these hard times sir. Sharp. Hard times ! Why surely 
youVe no reason to complain landlord. Fill. Why no sir, I 
don't complain; that is, on my own account — but then our 
public affairs, you know sir, we must think a little about them. 
Sharp. I believe if we mind every one his own business, and 
leave the affairs of the state to the conduct of wiser heads, 
we shall soon be convinced that we are a happy people. 
Trim. Excuse me there revd sir, saving your presence ; why 
sir, if I was deny'd the privilege of my shop to canvass poli- 
ticks, . . . you may e'en take my razors, soap, combs and 
all, and set fire to my shop. . . . But now sir, if forty come 
in together, and all in the most feezing hurry; I have nothing 
to do but to souse plump into a descant upon the times, and 
in the snap of a finger every man is as patient and still as any 
blockhead in my shop — arrectis aiiribus^ they sit gaping, 
with solemn unmeaning phiz's ; . . . and then I rattle away 
upon grievances, opposition, rebellion and so on, only for the 
innocent purpose of supporting the credit of my shop. . . . 
For by the mother that bore me, ... I am ignorant of the 
essential difference . . . between a true whig and an honest 
tory. . . . Puff [a late representative, who has just come 
in]. Hem! he! hem! . . . Why, Mr. speaker! — I beg 
pardon — gentlemen, I mean — . . . but as I was saying — 
for him to say as this here — to wit — that there is no differ- 
ence between a whig and a tory — why what a dickens are we 
.contending about, if so be as how this here was the case 

-a fine case truly — why has not Lord North and Lord 
Hilsboro' and that George Greenville stript us of all our 
constitutional charter rights and privileges — the birth-right 
of Englishmen, which our pious fore-fathers purchased with 
their blood and treasure, when they came over into this waste 
howling wilderness. . . . Before Pd give up our just rights 
and privileges, Pd take my gun, and load and fire and pull 
trigger like the nation and fight up to the knees in blood. 
. . . Grave. ... As Mr. — h — hugh — Puff has very well 
observed, all our charter rights and privileges are torn from 
us and we are made slaves, and the Lord send us deliverance 

— h — hugh — h — hugh — h — hugh . Sharp. Don't you 
carry matters rather too far deacon? . . . Pray consider, 
don't you sit quietly under your own vine and under your 



REVOLUTIONARY LITERATURE. 315 

own fig-tree? Don't you enjoy full liberty of conscience in 
religious matters? . . . Does any one meddle with your per- 
son or property ? Are you over-burthened with taxes ? . . . 
Turn your eyes to your brother Englishmen in Great-Britain 
— see with what taxes and duties they are burthened. . . . 
Puff. But pray revd sir, have the parliament any right to 
make laws for us ? [Sharp then enters into a long and plausi- 
ble argument to show that Parliament had always exercised 
an unquestioned right to regulate trade by laying duties upon 
imports, and that the new duties upon tea, etc., did not differ 
from the old duties except in the express declaration by Par- 
liament that they wxre levied for the purpose of raising rev- 
enue as well as for regulating trade. He thus concludes:] 
Sharp. . . . They don't consider that they are entering the 
lists with a power, which is more than a match for all the 
other powers of Europe ; they don't consider the horrors of 
a civil war. . . . Their [Congress's] resolves are nothing 
short of high treason ; their association is an open declaration 
of hostilities, partaking . . . equally of wickedness and folly. 
. . . Their addresses are a jargon of contradictions and 
absurdities. . . . Bump. Fiddle faddle, 'tis all stuff and 
nonsense ; redress of grievances is but the decoy set up to 
catch the ignorant and unwary. The leaders aim at an inde- 
pendency on Great-Britain, in order to become themselves 
the tyrants of the Colonies. . . . Trz9n. Well, I'm deter- 
min'd to drop my shop preachments. . . . Grave. I verily 
fear we are all wrong. . . . Puff. I profess, I'm of the same 
mind ; I begin to see things in a different light. . . . Sharp. 
Gentlemen I wish you all a very good night. — A Cure for 
the Spleen^ pp. 3-10, 25-28, 32, ed. 1775. 

J. Hector St. John Crevecceur. 

A Snake-Story , 

As I was one day sitting solitary and pensive in my primi- 
tive arbour, ... I beheld two snakes of considerable length, 
the one pursuing the other with great celerity through a hemp 
stubble field. The aggressor was of the black kind, six feet 
long; the fugitive w^as a water snake, nearly of equal dimen- 
sions. They soon met, and in the fury of their first encounter, 
they appeared in an instant firmly twisted together ; and 
whilst their united tails beat the ground, they mutually tried 
with open jaws to lacerate each other. . . . But notwith- 
standing this appearance of mutual courage and fury, the 



3i6 APPENDIX. 

water snake still seemed desirous of retreating toward the 
ditch, its natural element. This was no sooner perceived by 
the keen-eyed black one, than twisting its tail twice round a 
stalk of hemp, and seizing its adversary by the throat, not by 
means of its jaws, but by twisting its own neck twice round 
that of the water snake, [it] pulled it back from the ditch. To 
prevent a defeat the latter took hold likewise of a stalk on 
the bank. . . . Their eyes seemed on fire, and ready to 
start out of their heads ; at one time the conflict seemed 
decided ; the water snake bent itself into two great folds, and 
by that operation rendered the other more than commonly 
outstretched ; the next minute the new struggles of the black 
one gained an unexpected superiority, it acquired two great 
folds likewise, which necessarily extended the body of its 
adversary in proportion as it had contracted its own. . . . 
At last the stalk to which the black snake fastened, suddenly 
gave way, and . . . they both plunged into the ditch. . . . 
They soon re-appeared on the surface twisted together, as in 
their first onset ; but the black snake seemed to retain its 
wonted superiority, for its head was exactly fixed above that 
of the other, which it incessantly pressed down under the 
water, until it was stifled, and sunk. The victor ... re- 
turned on shore and disappeared. — Letters from an Ainerican 
Farmer^ pp. 243-246, ed. 1782. 

Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution. 

The Liberty Song.^ 
Come join hand in hand, brave Americans all, 
And rouse your bold hearts at fair Liberty's call; 
No tyrannous acts, shall suppress your just claim, 
Or stain with dishonor America's name. 

In freedom we're born, and in freedom we'll live; 
Our purses are ready. 
Steady, Friends, steady, 
Not as slaves, but 2iS freemen our money we'll give. 

A Ballad of Nathan Hale. 
The breezes went steadily thro' the tall pines, 

A saying " oh ! hu-ush ! " a saying " oh ! hu-ush ! " 
As stilly stole by a bold legion of horse. 

For Hale in the bush, for Hale in the bush. 

1 By John Dickinson and Arthur Lee. The song, which has nine 
stanzas, was first published in The Boston Gazette, July 18, 1768, and 
became very popular. 



REVOLUTIONARY LITERATURE. 317 

" Keep still ! " said the thrush as she nestled her young, 
In a nest by the road; in a nest by the road. 

" For the tyrants are near, and with them appear, 

What bodes us no good, what bodes us no good." . . . 

The guards of the camp, on that dark, dreary night, 
Had a murderous will; had a murderous will. 

They took him and bore him afar from the shore. 
To a hut on the hill; to a hut on the hill. . . o 

Five minutes were given, short moments, no more, 

For him to repent; for him to repent; 
He pray'd for his mother, he ask'd not another, 
To Heaven he went; to Heaven he went. 
• Songs and Ballads of the A7nerican Revolution^ pp. 37, 131-133, 
ed. by F. Moore, 1856. 



John Trumbull. 

A Toyshop of Coquettish Brains. 

First from the dust our sex began, 
But woman was refin'd from man; . . . 
Shall half your precepts tend the while 
Fair nature's lovely work to spoil, . . . 
And make their minds the receptacle 
Of every thing that 's false and fickle, . . . 
Where stands display'd with costly pains 
The toyshop of coquettish brains, 
And high-crown'd caps hang out the sign, 
And beaus as customers throng in; ... 
Where the light head and vacant brain 
Spoil all ideas they contain, 
As th' air pump kills in half a minute 
Each living thing you put within it. 
• The Progress of Dulness, Part III., pp. 50, 51, ed. 1794. 



Witty Couplets. 

prove 
:)ve. 

Ibid., p. 62. 



For men of sense will always prove 
The most forlorn of fools in love. 



So once, in fear of Indian beating, 

Our grandsires bore their guns to meeting, 

And look'd, in form, as all must grant, 



3i8 APPENDIX. 

Like th' antient, true church militant ; 
Or fierce, like modern deep divines, 
Who fight with quills, like porcupines. 

— /^zV., p. 55, 

Tarring and Feathering a Tory. 

Forthwith the croud proceed to deck 

With halter'd noose M'Fingal's neck, . . „ 

Then lifting high th' pond'rous jar, 

Pour'd o'er his head the smoaking tar. , » . 

His flowing wig, as next the brim, 

First met and drank the sable stream; . . » 

From nose and chin's remotest end, 

The tarry icicles depend; 

Till all o'erspread, with colors gay 

He glitter'd to the western ray, 

Like sleet-bound trees in wintry skies, 

Or Lapland idol carv'd in ice. 

And now the feather-bag displayed, 

Is wav'd in triumph o'er his head. 

And spreads him o'er with feathers missive 

And down upon the tar adhesive : 

Not Maia's son, with wings for ears, 

Such plumes around his visage wears; 

Nor Milton's six wing'd angel gathers. 

Such superfluity of feathers. . . . 

Then on the two- wheel' d car of state, 

They rais'd our grand Duumvirate. ... 

In front the martial music comes 

Of horns and fiddles, fifes and drums^ 

With jingling sound of carriage bells, 

And treble creak of rusted wheels. . « . 

And at fit periods ev'ry throat 

Combined in universal shout. 

And hail'd great Liberty in chorus, 

Or bawl'd, Confusion to the Tories. 

— M^Fingal, Canto III., pp. 65, 66, ed. 1782. 

Timothy Dwight. 

The Death of Irad. 

Again in ether rose the dreadful steel; 

Again it lighten'd, and again it fell; 

The Heathen's, ringing, leap'd from Irad's shield; 

The Youth's in fragments, treacherous, strew' d the field. 

Held by a chief, swift-leaping from the band, 



REVOLUTIONARY LITERATURE. 319 

A second falchion touch'd his reaching hand, 

When — loveliest Youth ! why did thy buckler's bound 

Shield but thy breast? why not thy form surround? . . . 

From some base arm unseen, in covert flung. 

Through his white side a coward javelin sung. 

He fell — a groan sad-murmur'd round the host, 

Their joy, their glory, and their leader lost. 

— The Conquest of Cafiaan, VIII., 343-356, ed. 1785. 

Joel Barlow. 

Gory War. 
Columbus turn'd; when rolling to the shore 
Swells o'er the seas an undulating roar; 
Slow, dark, portentous, as the meteors sweep, 
And curtain black the illimitable deep. 
High stalks, from surge to surge, a demon Form, 
That howls thro heaven and breathes a billowing storm. 
His head is hung with clouds; his giant hand 
Flings a blue flame far flickering to the land; 
His blood-stain'd limbs drip carnage as he strides, 
And taint with gory grume the staggering tides; 
Like two red suns his quivering eyeballs glare. 
His mouth disgorges all the stores of war, 
Pikes, muskets, mortars, guns and globes of fire. 
And lighted bombs that fusing trails expire. 
Percht on his helmet, two twin sisters rode. 
The favorite offspring of the murderous god, 
Famine and Pestilence; whom whilom bore 
His wife, grim Discord, on Trinacria's shore; 
When first their Cyclop sons, from Etna's forge, 
Fill'd his foul magazine, his gaping gorge : 
Then earth convulsive groan'd, high shriek'd the air. 
And hell in gratulation call'd him War. 

— The Columbiad, V., 471-492, ed. 1807, 

The Hasty-Pudding. 
Where the huge heap lies center'd in the hall. 
The lamp suspended from the cheerful wall, 
Brown corn-fed nymphs, and strong hard-handed beaux, 
Alternate rang'd, extend in circling rows. 
Assume their seats, the solid mass attack; 
The dry husks rattle, and the corn-cobs crack; 
The song, the laugh, alternate notes resound. 
And the sweet cider trips in silence round. 
The laws of Husking ev'ry wight can tell; 



320 APPENDIX. 

And sure no laws he ever keeps so well : 

For each red ear a general kiss he gains, 

With each smut ear she smuts the luckless swains; 

But when to some sweet maid a prize is cast, 

Red as her lips, and taper as her waist, 

She walks the round, and culls one favor'd beau 

Who leaps, the luscious tribute to bestow. 

There is a choice in spoons. Tho' small appear 

The nice distinction, yet to me 'tis clear. 

The deep bowl'd Gallic spoon, contriv'd to scoop 

In ample draughts the thin diluted soup. 

Performs not well in those substantial things, 

Whose mass adhesive to the metal clings; 

Where the strong labial muscles must embrace 

The gentle curve, and sweep the hollow space. 

With ease to enter and discharge the freight, 

A bowl less concave but still more dilate, 

Becomes the pudding best. ... 

Fear not to slaver; 'tis no deadly sin. 

Like the free Frenchman, from your joyous chin 

Suspend the ready napkin; or, like me. 

Poise with one hand your bowl upon your knee; 

Just in the zenith your wise head preject. 

Your full spoon, rising in a line direct. 

Bold as a bucket, heeds no drops that fall. 

The wide mouth'd bowl will surely catch them all. 

— The Hasty- Puddings Canto III., pp. 9-12, ed. 1796, 

Philip Freneau. 

The House of Night?- 

O'er a dark field I held my dubious way 

Where Jack-a-lanthorn walk'd his lonely round, 

Beneath my feet substantial darkness lay. 

And screams were heard from the distemper'd ground. 

Nor looked I back, till to a far off wood 
Trembling with fear, my weary feet had sped — 
Dark was the night, but at the inchanted dome 
I saw the infernal windows flaming red. . . . 

Dim burnt the lamp, and now the phantom Death 
Gave his last groans in horror and despair — 

1 In which Death is dying. 



REVOLUTIONARY LITERATURE. 321 

"All hell demands me hence" — he said, and threw 
The red lamp hissing through the midnight air. 
-The House of Night, stanzas 109, no, 117, in The Poems of 
Philip Freneau, ed. 1786. 

The Wild Honey Suckle ?• 

Fair flower, that dost so comely grow, 
Hid in this silent, dull retreat, 
Untouch'd thy honey'd blossoms blow, 
Unseen thy little branches greet : 

No roving foot shall find thee here, 

No busy hand provoke a tear. 

By Nature's self in white array' d, 
She bade thee shun the vulgar eye, 
And planted here the guardian shade, 
And sent soft waters murmuring by; 

Thus quietly thy summer goes, 

Thy days declining to repose. 

Smit with those charms, that must decay, 

I grieve to see your future doom; 

They died — nor were those flowers less gay. 

The flowers that did in Eden bloom; 

Unpitying frosts, and Autumn's power 
Shall leave no vestige of this flower. 

From morning suns and evening dews 
At first thy little being came : 
If nothing once, you nothing lose. 
For when you die you are the same; 
The space between, is but an hour, 
The frail duration of a flower. 
-Poems by Philip Freneau, ed. 1795. (The text in the 1788 
edition is inferior.) 

Henry H. Brackenridge. 

Warren's Speech at Bunker Hill, 

To arms, brave countrymen, for see the foe. 
Comes forth to battle, and would seem to try, 
Once more, their fortune in decisive war. . . . 
. . . Our noble ancestors, 
Out-brav'd the tempests, of the hoary deep, 

1 The entire poem is given. 



322 APPENDIX. 

And on these hills, uncultivate and wild, 

Sought an asylum, from despotic sway; 

A short asylum, for that envious power, 

With persecution dire, still follows us. . . . 

Remember March, brave countrymen, that day. 

When Boston's streets ran blood. Think on that day, 

And let the memory, to revenge, stir up, 

The temper of your souls. . . . Let every arm, 

This day be active in fair freedom's cause. 

And shower down, from the hill, like Heav'n in wrath, 

Full store of lightning, and fierce iron hail. 

To blast the adversary. 

— The Battle of Bunker's- Hill, V., i., ed. 1776, 



B. 



NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES — COLLEGES — 
THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER. 

Newspapers and Magazines. ^ 

The first newspaper established in America was The Boston 
News-Letter^ a weekly^ which ran from 1704 to 1776.2 It 
was usually printed on a (printer's) half-sheet, and contained 
short pieces of foreign and domestic news. Its space was so 
scanty that in 1719 it had got thirteen months behindhand 
with the foreign news from regions beyond Great Britain ; for 
some time, therefore, a whole sheet was printed every other 
week, until the publisher was able to announce proudly that 
that part of his news-record was •' now less than five months " 
behindhand. The Boston Gazette was started in 17 19; The 
New England Coiirant in 1721. Several other papers were 
started in Boston within the next fifteen years ; but only one 
of them. The Boston Evening-Post^ continued to the Revolu- 
tion. In 1768 The Boston Chroiiicle began to appear twice a 
week. In 1770 The Massachusetts Spy was published thrice 
a week for a few months ; in 177 1 it became a weekly, but of 
larger size than any which had yet appeared in Boston, being 
printed on a whole sheet, four columns to a page. Pennsyl- 
vania was only a little behind Massachusetts, the third news- 
paper in America, The A7nerican Weekly Mercury^ being 
started in Philadelphia, Dec. 22, 1719, one day later than 
The Boston Gazette. The second newspaper in the colony, 
The Perinsylvania Gazette^ founded in 1728, was bought in 
1729 by Franklin, who published it twice a week for a while 
and soon made it very profitable. Several other Pennsylvania 
newspapers (some of them in German) sprang up at various 
times before the Revolution. The first daily newspaper in 

1 Most of the facts are taken from Thomas's History of Printing in 
America. 

2 A newspaper, Publick Occurrences, was started in Boston in 1690, 
but the authorities suppressed it after the first issue. 

323 



324 APPENDIX. 

the United States, The Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Ad* 
vertiser, was founded in Philadelphia in 1784. The colony 
of New York was the third in the field, The IVew York Gazette 
making its appearance in 1725. Before 1770 eight other 
newspapers had been started in New York, although some 
lived but a short time. Virginia had but two newspapers 
before the Revolution, founded in 1736 and 1766 respectively. 
In Maryland the first newspaper was started in 1727; in 
Rhode Island and South Carolina, in 1732; in Connecticut 
and North Carolina, in 1755; i^ ^^w Hampshire, in 1756; 
in Delaware, in 1762; in Georgia, in 1763. At the outbreak 
of the Revolution there were in the colonies 37 newspapers, 
distributed as follows : Pennsylvania, 9 ; Massachusetts, 7 ; 
New York, 4 ; Connecticut, 4 ; South Carolina, 3 ; Rhode 
Island, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, 2 each ; New 
Hampshire and Georgia, i each. Not to be deceived by 
words we should remember that the stunted little newspapers 
of Colonial and Revolutionary times were, in size, circulation, 
and amount of news, very different from the journals of to-day. 
The •' editorial," too, in its modern sense, was unknown to 
our great-grandfathers ; letters to the publisher took its place 
to some extent, and in times of public excitement the old 
Gazettes and Mercuries might do a good deal to indicate and 
to mould public sentiment. But in general the Colonial and 
Revolutionary newspaper not only presented little news but 
had little or nothing to say about it. 

The American magazines, like the newspapers, closely fol- 
lowed English models, and were not much if at all inferior. 
To the modern reader, however, they seem on the whole 
feeble, dry, and dull. Some idea of them may be had from 
the plan set forth in the preface to The American Magazine 
and Monthly Chronicle for the British Colonies^ which was 
launched in 1757, at Philadelphia, "By a Society of Gentle- 
men," and is a superior sample of its class : each number was 
to contain " an account of European affairs " ; "a philosophi- 
cal miscellany " ; " monthly essays, in prose and verse " ; '* a 
history of the present war in North-America " ; " monthly 
transactions in each colony, the account of new books, . . . 
preferments, births, marriages, deaths, arrivals of ships, prices 
current." The emphasis on the practical and instructive is 
evident ; of entertainment little was sought, and little found. 
Yet on the whole the talent available for these maga- 
zines was greater than the demand for them, and few and 
evil were the days of their pilgrimage. The Atnerican Maga* 



NEWSPAPERS, MAGAZINES, COLLEGES. 325 

^1716 a7td Historical Chronicle^ a monthly of fifty pages, estab- 
lished at Boston in 1743, ran three years and four months. 
The New England Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure^ a 
monthly which came out when it could, after the appearance 
of three or four numbers in the course of six or seven months, 
was discontinued in 1759. The Royal Ainerican Magazine^ 
printed in handsome type, with two copperplate engravings 
in each number, began to be issued at Boston in January, 
1774; it had a considerable list of subscribers, but the battle 
of Lexington killed it. In Pennsylvania conditions were also 
unfavorable for longevity. The General Magazine lived only 
six months, in 1741. The A7nerican Magazine (already men- 
tioned) seems to have died in a year. The Pennsylvania 
Magazine, edited and written, in part, by Thomas Paine, was 
started in January, 1775, and died in July, 1776, the last 
number containing the Declaration of Independence. The 
United States Magazine, edited by H. H. Brackenridge, with 
Philip Freneau as a leading contributor, was published at 
Philadelphia through 1779, and was then discontinued "until 
an established peace and a fixed value of the money shall 
render it convenient or possible to take it up again." After 
the war, magazines were again attempted. The Boston Maga- 
zine came in and went out with the year 1785. The Column- 
Man Magazine, started in 1786, lived three years. The 
American Museum was established in 1787. Other maga- 
zines made their appearance from time to time, and had some 
success. But it was not until 18 15, thirteen years after the 
founding of The Edinburgh Review had inaugurated a new 
era for magazines in Great Britain, that American magazine 
literature was placed upon a solid basis by the establishment 
of The North American Review. 

Colleges. 

The intellectuality of the stock which peopled British 
America is shown by the fact that they early established col- 
leges. Harvard College was opened^ in 1638; William and 
Mary College, Virginia, in 1694; Yale College in 1701 ; Col- 
lege of New Jersey (now Princeton University) in 1746; 
Washington and Lee University, Virginia, in 1749; Univer- 

1 The dates of founding or chartering are often different from the 
dates of actual opening. Thus Harvard was founded in 1636, by a 
vote of the Legislature appropriating money ; it was chartered in 1650. 
The dates here given are taken from Johnson's Universal Cyclopcedla, 



326 APPENDIX. 

sity of Pennsylvania in 1753 ; King's College (now Columbia 
University) in 1754; Frederick College, Maryland, in 1763; 
Rhode Island College (now Brown University) in 1765 ; Rut- 
gers College, New Jersey, in 1770; Dartmouth College in 
1770; Hampden-Sidney College, Virginia, in 1776; Wash- 
ington College, Maryland, in 1782 ; Dickinson College, Penn- 
sylvania, in 1783; College of Charleston, South Carolina, in 
1785. Thus before the Revolution nine of the thirteen colo- 
nies had institutions of higher learning. These colonial 
colleges were of course small and poorly equipped. But most 
of them nevertheless did good work, especially in the classics. 
The requirements for admission to Harvard are thus stated 
by Cotton Mather in his Magnalia (Book IV., p. 127, ed. 
1702) : "When Scholars had so far profited at the Grammar 
Schools, that they could Read any Classical Author into 
English, and readily make, and speak true Latin, and Write 
it in Verse as well as Prose ; and perfectly Dechne the Para- 
digms of Nouns and Verbs in the Greek Tongue, they were 
judged capable of Admission into Harvard-Colledge." The 
college course, in Harvard at least, "embraced the contem- 
poraneous learning of the colleges in England," ^ including 
(in 1643) rhetoric, logic, ethics, divinity, arithmetic, geometry, 
physics, astronomy, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Syriac, Chaldee, 
etc.^ President Dunster wrote in 1649 that some of the 
Harvard students could "with ease dexterously translate 
Hebrew and Chaldee into Greek." ^ This steeping in the 
great languages and literatures of antiquity was one of the 
best possible ways to prepare for the creation, later, of a 
worthy literature in the mother tongue. The American poets 
and novelists were yet to be born. Meanwhile their ancestors 
wisely conned the pages of Homer, Virgil, and Cicero. 

The New England Primer.^ 

From this curious little book the children of New England, 
for a century and a half, learned the elements of religion and 
morality as well as of reading. The first compiler of it 
seems to have been Benjamin Harris, a Boston publisher, 
who, before he fled from England in 1686, had printed The 

1 Peirce's A Histojy 0/ Harvard University, p. 7 ; Appendix, pp. 6, 7. 

2 Felt's The Ecclesiastical History of New England, Vol. II., p. 10. 

3 See two articles by J. H. Trumbull in The Sunday School Times^ 
April 29 and May 6, 1882; and The New-England Primer, by P. L 
Ford (Dodd, Mead & Co., 1897). 



THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER. 327 

Protestant Tutor ^ which had several of the distinctive features 
of the Primer^ and was (says Mr. Ford) its " legitimate prede- 
cessor." The Primer is also the descendant of a line of 
English primers, running back through many centuries. The 
earliest surviving reference to it is in an almanac for 1691, 
published by Harris, in which he advertised as forthcoming 
*• a Second fmpression of the New-England Primer enlarged, 
to which is added, more Directions for Spelling," etc. The 
first edition must have appeared (says Mr. Ford) between 
1687 and 1690. The earliest extant complete copy was pub- 
lished at Boston in 1737. The book was reprinted number- 
less times in the eighteenth century, with various changes and 
additions,^ and has often been reproduced since as a curiosity. 
In its sombre and dogmatic religiousness, severe morality, 
and defective aesthetic sense (as shown by the doggerel verse 
and rude wood-cuts). The New England Prhner is a mirror 
of the times which produced and used it. It passes rapidly, 
and without apparent sense of incongruity, from hard sense 
or sublime theology to the puerile and trivial. Some idea of 
the Primer may be had from a description of a copy printed 
(as the frontispiece shows) sometime during Washington's 
presidency. It is a quaint little book, four inches long, two 
and three-fourths inches wide, and one-third of an inch thick. 
The lids are of wood, covered with pale-blue paper and united 
by a leather back. The title-page reads thus : '• The New- 
England Primer, or, an easy and pleasant Guide to the Art of 
Reading. Adorned with Cutts. To which are added. The 
Assembly of Divines' Catechism. Boston: Printed and sold 
by J. White, near Charles-River Bridge." On the reverse are 
two stanzas to children, ending with 

Nor dare indulge a meaner flame, 
Till you have lov'd the Lord. 

The alphabet follows ; then come " Easy Syllables for Chil- 
dren " — ab^ ac, eb^ ec^ etc. ; and in five pages more, a bo mi 
na ti on and a scanty assortment of other '^ Words of six 
Syllables" are reached. Art and poetry are now wedded to 
the alphabet in twenty-four couplets or triplets, illustrated by 
inimitable wood-cuts apparently made by the printer with 
his pocket-knife. Some of the choicest lines are these : 

1 Some editions reprinted John Cotton's Spiritual Milk for Amer- 
lean Babes, Drawn out of the Breasts of Both Testaments, for their 
Souls Nourishment, 



328 APPENDIX. 

" In Adam's fall, We sinned all " ; " Young (9badias, David, 
Josias, All were pious"; "Xerxes did die, And so must 
I"; ^^Zaccheus, he Did climb the tree, Our Lord to see." 
After some other matter, including the statement that " He 
that don't learn his ABC, For ever will a blockhead be," 
come the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed. Treading 
close on the heels of these sublime passages intrudes some 
pious doggerel, beginning, 

I in the burying place may see 
Graves shorter there than I. 

This is at once succeeded by Watts 's pretty Cradle Hymn, 

Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber, 
Holy Angels guard thy bed, 

and his " Now I lay me down to sleep," both which are 
still sacred memories to millions. They are but thinly 
fenced off by Agur's Prayer from a marvellous cut which 
represents " Mr. John Rogers, minister of the gospel," " the 
first martyr in Queen Mary's reign," burning at the stake, 
while "his wife, with nine small children, and one at her 
breast," ^ calmly look on ; several pages of metrical advice, 
which unhappily escaped the author's fate, follow. Then 
comes The Shorter Catechism, which fills most of the latter 
half of the book. The solemn questions and answers are 
still sounding in our ears when we are exhorted to " Let dogs 
delight to bark and bite " ; children are once more reminded 
that until their "breast glows with sacred love" they should 
" indulge no meaner fires " ; and the Primer ends with this 
secular stanza, which is all the same as if a Puritan congre- 
gation were to come out of church in a jig : — 

Here 's Tom, Dick, and Benny, 

With pitchfork and with rake; 
Sally, Kate, and Jenny, 

Come here the hay to make. 

1 Many were the hours spent by the curious school-boy in wrestling 
with the question whether there were ten children in all or only nine. 
The obscure wood-cut but darkened the problem, which is still un- 
solved. 



c. 

PARTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF COLONIAL AND 
REVOLUTIONARY LITERATURE. 

[Many of the titles are copied from first editions; most of the others, from 
Sabin's Bibliotheca Americana. The titles are often abridged; but what is 
given is reproduced as exactly as possible, and anything added is enclosed in 
brackets.] 

I. COLONIAL PERIOD. 

I. VIRGINIA. 

A Trve Relation of such occurrences and accidents of noate as hath 

hapned in Virginia since the first planting of that Collony. Written 

by Captaine Smith. London, 1608. 
A True Reportory of the Wracke, and Redemption of Sir Thomas 

Gates, Knight. By William Strachey. London, 1610. 
Good Nevves from Virginia. From Alexander Whitaker. London, 

1613. 
The Generall Historic of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles. 

By Captaine lohn Smith. London, 1624. 
Ovids Metamorphosis Englished by G. S. [George Sandys], London, 

1626. 
A Voyage to Virginia. By Colonel Norwood, [n. p. n. d.] [Reprinted : 

Force's Historical Tracts, Vol. HL] 
Leah and Rachel, or, the Two FruitfuU Sisters Virginia, and Mary-Land. 

By John Hammond. London, 1656. [Reprinted: Force's Histor- 
ical Tracts, Vol. HL] 
A Song of Sion. Written by a Citizen thereof [John Grave], whose 

outward Habitation is in Virginia. [England.] 1662. 
History of Virginia. By a Native and Inhabitant of the Place [Robert 

Beverley]. The second edition. London, 1722. [The first edition 

(London, 1705) was smaller.] 
The Present State of Virginia. By Hugh Jones, A.M. London, 1724. 

[Reprinted : Sabin's Reprints, No. 5.] 
The Westover Manuscripts : containing the History of the Dividing 

Line betwixt Virginia and North Carolina; a Journey to the Land 

of Eden, A.D. 1733 1 ^.nd a Progress to the Mines. Written from 

1728 to 1736, and now first published. By William Byrd, of West' 

oyer. Petersburg, 1841. 

329 



330 APPENDIX. 

History of the Dividing Line and Other Tracts. From the Papers of 

William Byrd. Richmond, 1866. 
Poems on Several Occasions. By a Gentleman of Virginia. Williams- 
burg, 1736. 
The History of the First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia. By 
William 'Stith, A.M. Williamsburg, 1747. 

2. NEW ENGLAND. 

A Description of New England ; or, The Observations, and discoueries 
of Captain lohn Smith. London, 1616. [Reprinted : Force's His- 
torical Tracts, Vol. H.] 

A Relation or lournall of the beginning and proceedings of the English 
Plantation setled at Plimoth. [By William Bradford and Edward 
Winslow.] London, 1622. [Long known as Mourt's Relation. 
Reprinted : Library of New-England History, No. i ; portions of, in 
Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, Series 2, Vol. IX.] 

Bradford's History " Of Plimoth Plantation." From the Original Manu- 
script. With a Report of the Proceedings Incident to the Return of 
the Manuscript to Massachusetts. Boston, 1898. [Also in Coll. 
Mass. Hist. Soc, Series 4, Vol. III.] 

New-England. Or A Briefe Enarration of the Ayre, Earth, Water, Fish 
and Fowles of that Country. With a Description of the Natures, 
Orders, Habits, and Religion of the Natiues ; in Latine and Enghsh 
Verse. [By William MorrelL] London, 1625. [Reprinted : The 
Club of Odd Volumes, Boston, 1895, in photographic facsimile from 
a copy of the first edition in the British Museum ; Coll. Mass. Hist. 
Soc, Series i. Vol. I., but with only the Latin title, Nova-Anglia.] 

A Journal of the Transactions and Occurrences in the settlement of 
Massachusetts and the other New-England Colonies, from the year 
1630 to 1644. Written by John Winthrop, and now first published 
from a correct copy of the original Manuscript. Hartford, 1790. 
[Reprinted at Boston, 1825, 1826, as The History of New England. 
This edition included the third volume of the manuscript, bringing 
the record down to 1649.] 

Some Old Puritan Love-Letters — John and Margaret Winthrop — 
1618-1638. Edited by J. H. Twichell. New York : Dodd, Mead & 
Co., 1893. 

New-Englands Plantation. Written by a reuerend Diuine now there 
resident [Francis Higginson]. London, 1630. [Reprinted: Force's 
Historical Tracts, Vol. I.; Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, Series i, Vol I.] 

New Englands Prospect. By William Wood. London, 1634. [Re- 
printed : Pub. Prince Soc, Vol. I.] 

New English Canaan. By Thomas Morton. Amsterdam, 1637. [Re- 
printed: Force's Historical Tracts, Vol. II.; Pubo Prince Soc, Vol. 
XV.] 

The Freeman's Oath. [Cambridge.] 1639. [The first thing printed 
in America. See Winthrop's The History of New England, Vol. l.t 
p. 289, ed. 1825.] 

The Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre. 
[Cambridge.] 1640. [Said to be the first book printed in America. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY — COLONIAL PERIOD. 331 

The copy in the John Carter Brown Library, Providence, has the auto- 
graph of Richard Mather, one of the three principal translators.] 

Simplicities Defence against Seven-headed Policy. Or Innocency Vin- 
dicated, being unjustly Accused ... by that Seven-headed Church- 
Government united in New-England. [By Samuel Gorton.] London, 
1646. 

The Soules Implantation into the Naturall Olive. By T. H. [Thomas 
Hooker]. London, 1640. 

The Simple Cobler of Aggavvam in America. Willing to help 'mend 
his Native Country, lamentably tattered, both in the upper-Leather 
and sole, with all the honest stitches he can take. By Theodore de 
la Guard [Nathaniel Ward]. London, 1647. [Reprinted : London, 
1647, three editions; Boston, 1713 ; Force's Historical Tracts, Vol. 

III.] 

Mercurius Anti-mechanicus. Or The Simple Coblers Boy. By Theo- 
dore de la Guarden [Nathaniel Ward?]. London, 1648. 

The Parable of the Ten Virgins opened & applied. By Thomas 
Shepard. London, 1660. 

The Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs of the Old and New Testa- 
ment, Faithfully Translated into English Metre. For the use, edifi- 
cation and comfort of the Saints in'publick and private, especially in 
New-England. Cambridge, Printed for Hezekiah Usher, of Bostoo, 
[1658?] [This work, appearing first in 1651, exists in several slightly 
different forms. " The only copy of this edition [the one above] that 
I know of was sold at the Brinley sale for ^90, and is now in the 
library of Brown University." — Sabin's Bibliotheca Americana.] 

The Tenth Muse lately sprung up in America. Or Severall Poems, 
compiled with great variety of Wit and Learning, full of delight. 
By a Gentlewoman in those parts [Anne Bradstreet] . London, 1650. 

Several Poems. By a Gentlewoman in New-England [Anne Bradstreet]. 
The second Edition, Corrected by the Author, and enlarged by an 
Addition of several other Poems found amongst her Papers after her 
Death. Boston, 1678. [Reprinted: 1758.] 

The Works of Anne Bradstreet in Prose and Verse. Edited by J. H. 
Ellis. Charleston, 1867. [Full biographical introduction.] 

A History of New-England. From the English planting in the Yeere 
1628. untill the Yeere 1652. [By Edward Johnson.] [The running 
title is " Wonder-working Providence of Sions Saviour, in New Eng- 
land."] London, 1654. [Reprinted : Coll. Mass. Hist, Soc, Series 
2, Vols. n.-VHL] 

The Day of Doom ; or, A Description of the Great and Last Judgment. 
With a short Discourse about Eternity. [By Michael Wigglesworth.] 
London, 1673. [First edition, 1661 or 1662 ? Reprinted : Boston, 
1715, 1751, 1828; Newburyport, 1811.] 

Meat out of the Eater : or, Meditations concerning the Necessity, End, 
and Usefulness of Afflictions unto God's Children. By Michael 
Wigglesworth. The Fifth Edition. Boston, 1717. [First edition, 
1669. On the fly-leaf of the Brown University Library's copy is 
written in ink, "6 of August 1729 Prise. Jonathan Trask His 
Book."] 

A Key into the Language of America : or, An help to the Language of 



332 APPENDIX. 

the Natives in that part of America, called New-England. Together, 
with briefe Observations of the Customes, Manners and Worships, 
&c. of the aforesaid Natives. On all which are added Spiritual Ob- 
servations. By Roger Williams. London, 1643. 

The Blovdy Tenent, of Persecution, for cause of Conscience, discuss'd, 
in a Conference betweene Trvth and Peace. [By Roger Williams] 
[London.] 1644. [The Brown University Library contains a copy 
of the very rare second edition, published in the same year.] 

The Bloudy Tenent Washed, and made white in the bloud of the Lambe, 
Whereunto is added a Reply to Mr. Williams Answer, to Mr. Cot- 
tons Letter. By John Cotton. London, 1647. 

The Bloody Tenent yet More Bloody : by Mr. Cottons endevour to wash 
it white in the Blood of the Lambe. Also a Letter to Mr Endicot 
Governor of the Massachusets in N. E. By R. WiUiams. London, 
1652. [On the fly-leaf of the Brown University Library's copy is 
written in WiUiams's hand, " For his honoured & beloved M^ John 
Clarke an eminent witness of Christ Jesus agst ye bloodie Doctrine 
of Persecution &c."] 

George Fox Digg'd out of his Burrovves. By R. W. [Roger Williams], 
Boston, 1676. 

A New-England Fire-Brand Quenched, Being Something in Answer 
unto a Lying, Slanderous Book, Entituled ; George Fox Digged out 
of his Burrows, &c. Where-unto is added, A Catalogue of his 
Railery, Lies, Scorn & Blasphemies. By George Fox and John 
Bvrnyeat. [n. p.] 1678. 

New-Englands Memoriall. By Nathaniel Morton. Cambridge, 1669. 

New-Englands Rarities Discovered : in Birds, Beasts, Fishes, Serpents, 
and Plants. Also a perfect Description of an Indian Sqva, in all 
her Bravery; with a Poem not improperly conferr'd upon her. By 
John Josselyn. London, 1672. 

A Brief History of the Pequot War. By Major John Mason. Boston, 
1736. [Written, 1670. Printed (imperfectly) in Relation of the 
Troubles in New England by Reason of the Indians, by Increase 
Mather, 1677. Reprinted : Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, Series 2, Vol. 
VIII.] 

A Brief Narrative of the Progress of the Gospel amongst the Indians in 
New-England. Given in by the Reverend Mr. John Elliot. Lon- 
don, 1671. 

The Logick Primer. Composed by J. E. [John Eliot] for the Use of 
the Praying Indians, [n. p.] 1672. 

Historical Collections of the Indians in New England. By Daniel 
Gookin. [First printed, from the original manuscripts, in 1792, in 
Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, Series i. Vol. I. Gookin's Epistle Dedica- 
tory is dated 1674.] 

Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674-1729. In Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, Series 5, 
Vols. V.-VII. 

A Looking Glass for the Times. By Peter Folger. Printed in the 
Year 1763. [Reprinted : R. I. Historical Tracts, No. 16. Dated 
April 26, 1676, but probably not printed before 1763.] 

An Elegie upon the Death of the Reverend Mr. Thomas Shepard. [By 
Urian Oakes.] Cambridge, 1677. [Reprinted : The Club of Odd 



BIBLIOGRAPHY ~ COLONIAL PERIOD. 333 

Volumes, Boston, 1896. Supposed to be the earliest poem both 
written and printed in America.] 

A Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New- England. By W. 
Hubbard. Boston, 1677. [Reprinted: London, 1677 ; Boston, 1775 ; 
Worcester, 1801 ; Norwich, 1802; Stockbridge, 1803; Danbury, 1803; 
Brattleborough, 1814; Roxbury, 1865. Usually referred to by the 
title of the later editions, A Narrative of the Indian Wars.] 

The Soveraignty & Goodness of God, a Narrative of the Captivity and 
Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. The Second Addition. 
Written by Her Own Hand. Cambridge, 1682. No copy of the 
first edition (1682?) is known to be extant. [Reprinted: London, 
1682 ; and many times since.] 

Ko/LirjTO7pa0ta. Or A Discourse Concerning Comets ; Wherein the Na- 
ture of Blazing Stars is Enquired into. As also two Sermons, Occa- 
sioned by the late Blazing Stars. By Increase Mather. Boston, 
1683. 

An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences. By Increase 
Mather. Boston, 1684. 

A Further Account of the Tryals of the New-England Witches. By 
Increase Mather, President of Harvard Colledge. London, 1693. 

A Poem dedicated to the Memory of the Reverend and Excellent Mr. 
Urian Oakes. Boston in New-England, 1682. [Reprinted : The 
Club of Odd Volumes, Boston, 1896. The poem is signed " N. R.," 
but is supposed to be by Cotton Mather, who would take peculiar 
pleasure in the ingenious pleasantry of signing the last letters of his 
name instead of the first. Nathaniel Mather, in a letter to Increase 
Mather, speaks of receiving a letter from him, dated 1682, and 
with it a sermon by Mr. Oakes and " two of your son's Poems on 
him " ; the Brown University Library's copy (said to be unique) 
has N. Mather's autograph at the bottom of the last page.] 

An Elegy on The Much-to-be-deplored Death of That Never-to-be- 
forgotten Person, The Reverend Mr. Nathaniel Collins. [By Cotton 
Mather.] Boston, 1685. [Reprinted : The Club of Odd Volumes, 
Boston, 1896.] 

Late Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions, 
clearly Manifesting, not only that there are Witches, but that Good 
Men (as well as others) may possibly have their Lives shortned by 
such evil Instruments of Satan. By Cotton Mather. London, 1691. 

The Wonders of the Invisible World. Observations upon the Nature, 
the Number, and the Operations of the Devils. By Cotton Mather. 
Boston, 1693. 

More Wonders of the Invisible World. Collected by Robert Calef. 
London, 1700. [An attack upon the belief in witchcraft.] 

Brontologia Sacra : the Voice of the Glorious God in the Thunder. 
Especially intended for an Entertainment in the Hours of Thunder. 
[By Cotton Mather.] London, 1695. 

Pillars of Salt. A History of some Criminals executed in this Land. 
With some of their Dying Speeches. [By Cotton Mather.] Boston, 
1699. 

Magnalia Christi Americana: or, the Ecclesiastical History of New- 
England, from its First Planting in the Year 1620. unto the Year of 



334 APPENDIX. 

our Lord, 1698. In Seven Books. By the Reverend and Learned 

Cotton Mather, M.A. London, 1702. 
A Treacle fetch'd out of a Viper. A Brief Essay upon Falls into Sins. 

[By Cotton Mather.] Boston, 1707. 
Bonifacius. An Essay upon the Good. [By Cotton Mather.] Boston, 

1710. [Same as Essays to Do Good.] 
A Christian Funeral. What should be the Behaviour of a" Christian at 

a Funeral ? [By Cotton Mather.] Boston, 17 13. 
The Religion of an Oath. Plain Directions How the Duty of Swearing, 

May be Safely Managed. [By Cotton Mather.] Boston, 1719. 
The Christian Philosopher: A Collection of the Best Discoveries in 

Nature, with Religious Improvements. By Cotton Mather, D.D. and 

Fellow of the Royal Society. London, 1721. 
The Nightingale. An Essay on Songs among Thorns. Or the Supports 

& Comforts of the Afflicted Believer. [By Cotton Mather.] Bos- 
ton, 1724. 
Boanerges. A Short Essay to preserve and strengthen the Good Ims 

pressions Produced by Earthquakes. [By Cotton Mather.] Boston, 

1727. 
The Life of the Very Reverend and Learned Cotton Mather, D.D. and 

F.R.S. By Samuel Mather, M.A. Boston, 1729. 
The Journals of Madam Knight, and Rev. Mr. Buckingham. From the 

Original Manuscripts, Written in 1704 and 1710. New- York, 1825. 
The Redeemed Captive, Returning to Zion. [By John Williams.] 

Boston, 1707. 
A Poem on Elijahs Translation, occasion'd by the Death of the Rev, 

Mr. Samuel Willard. By Mr. Colman, V.D.M. Boston, 1707. 
The Origin of the Whalebone-petticoat. A Satyr. Boston, 1714. 
Hoop Petticoats, Arraigned and Condemned by the Light of Nature 

and Law of God. Boston. [1726.] 
The Churches Quarrel Espoused. By John Wise. Boston, 17 10. 
A Vindication of the Government of New-England Churches. By 

John Wise. Boston, 17 17. 
Entertaining Passages Relating to Philip's War. By T. C. [Thomas 

Church]. Boston, 1716. [Reprinted: Boston, 1716; Newport, 1772 ; 

many times in this century.] 
Poetical Meditations, being the Improvement of some Vacant Hours. 

By Roger Wolcott. New London, 1725. [Reprinted: The princi- 
pal poem, in Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, Series i, Vol. IV. ; The Club oi 

Odd Volumes, Boston, 1898.] 
The History of the Wars of New-England, with the Eastern Indians, 

By Samuel Penhallow. Boston, 1726. 
A Poem on the Death of His late Majesty King George, and the Acces- 
sion of King George II. By Mr. Byles. [Boston, 1727.] 
A Poem Presented to His Excellency William Burnet, Esq.; on his 

Arrival at Boston, July 19, 1728. By Mr. Byles. [n. p. n. d.] 
Father Abbey's Will ; to which is added A Letter of Courtship to his 

Virtuous and Amiable Widow. [By John Seccomb.] Cambridge, 

1731. [Reprinted : The Will in The Gentleman's Magazine, May, 

1732.] 



BIBLIOGRAPHY — COLONIAL PERIOD. 335 

Chronological History of New England. By Thomas Prince, M.A. 
Boston, 1736. 

An Historical Discourse on the Civil and Religious Affairs of the Colony 
of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. By John Callender. 
Boston, 1739. [Reprinted : Coll. R.I. Hist. Soc, Vol. IV.] 

Memoirs of the Life and Death of Mrs. Jane Turell. London, 1741. 
[Includes some of her poems and prose pieces.] 

A Collection of Poems. By several Hands. Boston, 1744. 

Poems. By [Rev.] John Adams, M.A. Boston, 1745. 

A Brief and Plain Essay on God's Wonder-working Providence for 
New England. By Samuel Niles. New London, 1747. 

Entertainment for a Winter's Evening. By Me, the Hon. B. B. Esq. 
Qoseph Green] . Boston. [1750.] 

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. A Sermon. By Jonathan 
Edwards. Boston, 1741. 

A Careful and Strict Enquiry into the Modern prevailing Notions of that 
freedom of Will, which is supposed to be essential to Moral Agency, 
Vertue and Vice. By Jonathan Edwards. Boston, 1754. 

A Summary, Historical and Political, of the First Planting, Progressive 
Improvements, and Present State of the British Settlements in North- 
America. By William Douglass, M.D. Boston and London, 1755. 

The Choice : a Poem. [By Benjamin Church.] Boston, 1757. [Re- 
printed : Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, Series i, Vol. I.] 

The Conquest of Louisbourg. A Poem. By John Maylem, Philo- 
Bellum. [Boston, 1758.] 

Gallic Perfidy: A Poem. By John Maylem, Philo-Bellum. Boston, 
1758. 

Pietas et Gratulatio Collegii Cantabrigiensis apud Novanglos. Bostoni 
'- Massachusettensium. Typis J. Green & J. Russell. 1761. 

3. THE OTHER COLONIES. 

A Character of the Province of Mary-Land. Also a small Treatise on 
the wilde and naked Indians. By George Alsop. London, 1666. 

The Sot-weed Factor : Or, a Voyage to Maryland. A Satyr. In Bur- 
lesque Verse. By Eben Cook, Gent. London, 1708. [Reprinted : 
Shea's Early Southern Tracts, No. II.] 

Sotweed Redivivus; Or the Planters Looking-Glass. In Burlesque 
Verse. By E. C. Gent. Annapolis, 1730. 

A Brief Description of New York. By Daniel Denton. London, 1670. 
[Reprinted : Gowan's Bibliotheca Americana, 1845.] 

History of the Five Indian Nations. By Cadwallader Colden. New 
York, 1727. 

A General Idea of the College of Mirania. By William Smith. New- 
York, 1753. 

The History of the Province of New-York. By William Smith. Lon- 
don, 1757. 

A New Description of that Fertile and Pleasant Province of Carolina, 
By John Archdale: Late Governor of the Same. London, 1707. 
[Reprinted: Hist. Coll. So. Car., Vol. II.] 



336 APPENDIX. 

The History of Carolina. By John Lawson. London, 1709. 

Eliza Pinckney. (Women of Colonial and Revolutionary Times.) 
New York, 1896. [Contains her letters.] 

A New Voyage to Georgia. By a Young Gentleman. London, 1735. 
[Reprinted: Ga. Hist. Coll., Vol. U.] 

A True and Historical Narration of the Colony of Georgia. By Pat. 
Tailfer, M.D., Hugh Anderson, M.A., Da. Douglas, and Others. 
Charleston, S. C, 1741. [Reprinted : Ga. Hist. Coll., Vol. H.] 

The Life of William Penn : with selections from his Correspondence 
and Autobiography. By Samuel M. Janney. Second edition, re- 
vised. Philadelphia, 1852. 

An Historical and Geographical Account of the Province and Country 
of Pensilvania ; and of West-New-Jersey in America. By Gabriel 
Thomas. London, 1698. [Lithographic facsimile, 1848, done for 
H. A. Brady of the N. Y. Hist. Soc] 

God's Protecting Providence : Evidenced in the Remarkable Deliverance 
of divers persons from the Devouring Waves of the Sea, and, also, 
from the more Cruelly Devouring Jawes of the inhumane Cannibals 
of Florida. By Jonathan Dickenson. Philadelphia, 1699. 

Batchelor's-Hall. A Poem. By George Webb. [Philadelphia.] 1731. 

Cato's Moral Distichs Englished in Couplets. [By James Logan.] Phil- 
adelphia, 1735. 

Philosophic Solitude ; or, the Choice of a Rural Life. A Poem. By a 
Gentleman educated at Yale College [William Livingston]. New 
York, 1747. 

Poor Richard, 1733. An Almanack for the Year of Christ, 1733. By 
Richard Saunders, Philom. Philadelphia: Printed and sold by B. 
Franklin. [Continued till 1796, but " after 1758 Franklin wrote no 
more for ' Poor Richard.' " — McMaster's Franklin. The 1758 num- 
ber contained the famous Father Abraham's Speech.] 

Experiments and Observations on Electricity. By Mr. Benjamin Frank- 
lin. London, 1751. 

The Manners of the Times; a Satire. By Philadelphiensis. Phila- 
delphia, 1762. 

The Court of Fancy; a Poem. By Thomas Godfrey. Philadelphia, 
1762. 

Juvenile Poems on Various Subjects. With the Prince of Parthia, a 
Tragedy. By the late Mr. Thomas Godfrey, Junr., of Philadelphia. 
To which is prefixed Some Account of the Author and his Writings. 
Philadelphia, 1765. 

Poems on Several Occasions. By Nathaniel Evans, A. M. Philadelphia, 
1772. 

II. REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 

The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved. By James 
Otis. Boston, 1764. [Reprinted : London, 1765, 1766.] 

Ponteach: or the Savages of America. A Tragedy. [By Robert 
Rogers?] London, 1766. 

Liberty, Property and no Excise. A Poem compos'd on Occasion of 



BIBLIOGRAPHY — REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 337 

the Sight seen on the Great Trees, (so called) in Boston, New- 
England, on the 14th of August, 1765. [Boston.] 1765. (Price 6 Cop.) 
A New Collection of Verses applied to the First of November, A.D. 

1765. Together with a poetical Dream, concerning Stamped Papers. 
New-Haven. [1765.] 

The Disappointment ; or the Force of Credulity. By Andrew Barton. 
New York, 1767. 

Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, to the Inhabitants of the British 
Colonies. [By John Dickinson.] Boston. [1768.] [Reprinted : Phila- 
delphia, 1768, 1769, 1774; Boston, 1768; New York, 1768; Williams- 
burg, 1769; London, 1768, 1774; Dublin, 1768; Paris, 1769 (French 
translation) .] 

An Address to a Provincial Bashaw. By a Son of Liberty [Benjamin 
Church] . Printed in (the Tyrannic Administration of St. Francisco 
[Gov. Francis Bernard] ) , 1769. [Boston.] 

The Examination of Doctor Benjamin Franklin, before an August As= 
s^mbly, relating to the Repeal of the Stamp-Act. [Philadelphia?] 

1766. [Reprinted : London, 1767.] 

Philosophical and Miscellaneous Papers. Lately written by B. Frank- 
lin, LL.D. London, 1787. 

Poems on Various Subjects. By Phillis Wheatley, Negro Servant to 
Mr. John Wheatley, of Boston, in New England. London, 1773. 

The Adulateur. A Tragedy, as it is now acted in Upper Servia. [By 
Mercy Warren.] Boston, 1773. 

The Ladies' Philosophy of Love. A Poem, in four Cantos. Written 
in 1774. By Charles Stearns, A.B. Leominster, Mass., 1797. 

The Story of ^neas and Dido burlesqued. Charlestown, [S. C] , 1774. 

A Pretty Story. By Peter Grievous, Esq., A.B.C.D.E. [Francis Hopkin- 
son]. Philadelphia, 1774. [Reprinted: Philadelphia, 1774; Wil- 
liamsburg, 1774; New York, 1857, 1864.] 

The Miscellaneous Essays and Occasional Writings of Francis Hop- 
kinson. Philadelphia, 1792. [3 vols.] 

Memoirs of the Life of Josiah Quincy, Jun., by his Son, Josiah Quincy. 
Boston, Cummings, Hilliard, & Company, 1825. [Contains his jour- 
nals, letters, and Observations on the Boston Port-Bill.] 

Free Thoughts on the Proceedings of the Continental Congress. By a 
Farmer. Hear me, for I WILL speak! [By Samuel Seabury?] 
New York, 1774. [Reprinted: London, 1775. The first of the 
" Westchester Farmer's Letters."] 

A Full Vindication of the Measures of the Congress, from the Calum- 
nies of their Enemies ; In Answer to a Letter, under the Signature of 
A. W. Farmer, Whereby His ^Sophistry is exposed, his Cavils con- 
futed, his Artifices detected, and his Wit ridiculed. [By Alexander 
Hamilton.] New- York, 1774. 

The Farmer Refuted. [By Alexander Hamilton.] New York, 1775. 

The Group, a Farce. [By Mercy Warren.] Jamaica, Printed ; Phila- 
delphia, Re-printed ; 1775. 

The Patriots of North America. New-York, 1775. [An anonymous 
Tory poem of much vigor.] 



338 APPENDIX. 

Massachusettensis. [By Daniel Leonard.] [Boston, 1775.] [Reprinted: 
New York, 1775 ; London, 1776, four editions.] 

A^ Cure for the Spleen. Or Amusement for a Winter's Evening; being 
the Substance of a Conversation on the Times, over a Friendly 
Tankard and Pipe. Taken in short Hand, by Sir Roger de Coverly. 
America, 1775. [Reprinted : New York, n. d.] 

The Works of John Woolman. London, 1775. [Contains his Journal. 
The Journal was reprinted in 1873, with an introduction by Whittier.] 

An Elegy on the Times. [By John Trumbull.] Boston, 1774. [Re- 
printed : New Haven, 1775.] 

The Progress of Dulness. [By John Trumbull.] New Haven. [Part 
L, 1772; Parts n. and HL, 1773.] 

McFingal. A Modern Epic Poem. Or, the Town-Meeting. [By John 
Trumbull.] Philadelphia, 1775. [Reprinted: London, 1776.] 

M'Fingal : A Modern Epic Poem, in Four Cantos. [By John Trum- 
bull.] Hartford, 1782. [Reprinted: Boston, 1785, 1799, 1826; 
Philadelphia, 1791, 1839; London, 1792; New York, 1795, J864; 
Wrentham, 1801 ; Baltimore, 1812; Albany, 1813; Hudson, 1816; 
Hartford, 1856. The text of 1782 differs considerably from that of 
1775. The division into cantos is a new feature; many minor 
changes in diction have been made, and couplets inserted here and 
there ; the last 22 lines of Canto L, and the first 104 lines of Canto H., 
are new, as are of course the whole of Cantos HL and IV.] 

The Poetical Works of John Trumbull, LL.D. In Two Volumes. 
Hartford, 1820. [Contains memoir.] 

Common Sense : Addressed to the Inhabitants of America. [By Thomas 
Paine.] Philadelphia, 1776. [Reprinted : 1776, Philadelphia, Boston, 
New York, Newport, Newburyport, Norwich, Salem, Lancaster, Provi- 
dence, London, Edinburgh, Newcastle-upon-Tyne; and again and 
again since.] 

The Blockheads : or, the Affrighted Officers. A Farce. Boston, 1776. 

The Battle of Brooklyn. A Farce in two acts. New York, 1776. 
[Reprinted : Brooklyn, 1873, Long Island Publications, No. i.] 

The Fall of British Tyranny: or American Liberty Triumphant. A 
Tragi-Comedy of Five Acts. [By John Leacock ?] Philadelphia, 
1776. 

The Battle of Bunker s-Hill. A Dramatic Piece, of Five Acts, in Heroic 
Measure. By a Gentleman of Maryland [H. H. Brackenridge] . 
Philadelphia, 1776. 

The Death of General Montgomery. By the Author of the Battle of 
Bunker's-Hill. Philadelphia, 1777. 

The Motley Assembly, a Farce. Boston, 1779. 

A Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen's Captivity. Written by Himself. 
Price Ten Paper Dollars. Philadelphia, 1779. 

The American Times. [By Jonathan Odell.] London, 1780. 

The Old Jersey Captive : or, A Narrative of the Captivity of Thomas 
Andros on board the Old Jersey Prison Ship at New York, 178 1. 
In a Series of Letters to a Friend. Boston, 1833. 

A Narrative of the Capture of Henry Laurens, of His Imprisonment in 
the Tower of London, etc., 1780, 1781, 1782. Charleston, 1857. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY — REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 339 

The Blockheads ; an Opera, in Two Acts, as it was performed at New 
York. Printed at New York. London, Reprinted, 1782. 

Letters from an American Farmer. By J. Hector St. John [Crevecoeur] . 
London, 1782. [Reprinted: Dublin, 1782; London, 1783; Philadel- 
phia, 1793, 1798.J 

Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution. With notes and illus- 
trations by Frank Moore. New York, 1856. 

The Loyalist Poetry of the Revolution. Philadelphia, 1857. [Ekiited by 
W. Sargent.] 

America ; A Poem in the Style of Pope's Windsor Forest. [By Timothy 
Dwight ?] [n. p.] 1772. 

The Conquest of Canaan. By Timothy Dwight. Hartford, 1785. [Re- 
printed: London, 1788.] 

Greenfield Hill. By Timothy Dwight, D.D. New York, 1794. 

The Prospect of Peace. A Poetical Composition, delivered in Yale- 
College, at the Public Examination, of the Candidates for the Degree 
of Bachelor of Arts ; July 23, 1778. By Joel Barlow, A.B. New- 
Haven, 1788. 

A Poem, spoken at the Public Commencement at Yale College, in New- 
Haven ; September 12, 1781. [By Joel Barlow.] Hartford, [n. d.] 

The Vision of Columbus ; a Poem in Nine Books. By Joel Barlow, 
Esquire. Hartford, 1787. [Reprinted: Hartford, 1787; London, 
1787; Paris, 1793; London, 1794; Baltimore, 1814, 1816; Hagers- 
town, Md., 1820; Centreville, la., 1824.] 

A Letter to the National Convention of France, on the Defects in the 
Constitution of 1791. By Joel Barlow, [n. p. n. d.] 

The Conspiracy of Kings ; a Poem. By Joel Barlow. London, 1792. 

Advice to the Privileged Orders in the several States of Europe. By 
Joel Barlow. Paris, 1792, 1793. 

The Hasty-Pudding: A Poem in Three Cantos. Written at Chambery," 
in Savoy, January, 1793. Py Joel Barlow.] New York, 1796. [Re- 
printed: New Haven, 1796 ; Stockbridge, 1797 ; Salem, 1799; Hallo- 
well, 1815 ; Brooklyn, 1833 ; New York, 1847, 1856 (with a " Memoir 
on Maize ") ; in Harper's Magazine, July, 1856, with illustrations.] 

The Columbiad. A Poem. By Joel Barlow. Philadelphia, 1807. [In the 
Brown University Library's copy are corrections, apparently in the 
author's hand, which are embodied in the later editions. Reprinted : 
Philadelphia, 1809; London, 1809; Paris, 1813; Washington City, 
1825. The Vision of Columbus has 4,776 lines ; The Columbiad, 
7,332, divided into ten books. Many passages are rewTitten, not 
always for the better (see the description of Hesperus, Book L), and 
Book VL is almost wholly new.] 

Notice sur la Vie et les Ecrits de M. Joel Barlow. [With a translation 
into French verse of the first 140 lines of The Columbiad.] [n. p.] 
1813. 

The Anarchiad. Now first published in book form. New Haven, 1861. 
[By Trumbull, Barlow, Humphreys, and Lemuel Hopkins. First 
published in The New Haven Gazette, 1786-1787.] 

A. Poem, Addressed to the Armies of the United States of America. By 
a Gentleman of the Army [David Humphreys]. New Haven, 1780. 



340 APPENDIX. 

[Reprinted: New Haven, 1784; Paris, 1786, with French transla- 
tion in prose ; London, 1785.] 
A Poem on the Happiness of America. By D. Humphreys, [n. p.] 

1786. [Reprinted: London, 1786.] 
An Essay on the Life of Israel Putnam. [D. Humphreys.] Hartford, 

1788. 
Poems by Col. David Humphreys. Second Edition. Philadelphia, 

1789. 
The Miscellaneous Works of Colonel [David] Humphreys. New-York, 

1790. [Reprinted with additions : New York, 1804.] 
A Poem, on the Rising Glory of America ; being an Exercise delivered 

at the Public Commencement at Nassau-Hall, September 25, 1771. 

[By Philip Freneau.] Philadelphia, 1772. 
Voyage to Boston : A Poem. By Philip Freneau. Philadelphia, 1775. 
The British Prison-Ship : A Poem, in Four Cantos. To which is added, 

a Poem on the Death of Capt. N. Biddle, who was blown up, in an 

Engagement with the Yarmouth, near Barbadoes. [By Philip 

Freneau.] Philadelphia, 178 1. 
The Poems of Philip Freneau. Written chiefly during the late War. 

Philadelphia, 1786. [Reprinted: London, 1861, with biographical 

introduction.] 
A Journey from Philadelphia to New-York. By Robert Slender, Stock- 
ing Weaver [Philip Freneau]. Philadelphia, 1787. [Reprinted: 

Philadelphia, 1809, as A Laughable Poem, etc.] 
The Miscellaneous Works of Mr. Philip Freneau. Containing his 

Essays and Additional Poems. Philadelphia, 1788. 
Poems written between the Years 1768 and 1794. By Philip Freneau. 

Monmouth, N. J., 1795. 
The Village Merchant: A Poem. To which is added the Country 

Printer. [By Philip Freneau.] Philadelphia, 1794. 
Poems. By Philip Freneau. In Two Volumes. Philadelphia, 1809. 

[A revised edition of poems written between 1768 and 1793.] 
A Collection of Poems, on American Affairs, and a Variety of Other 

Subjects, chiefly Moral and Political ; written between the year 1797 

and the present time. By Philip Freneau. In Two Volumes. New 

York, 1815. 
Poems relating to the American Revolution. By Philip Freneau. With 

Memoir and Notes by Evert A. Duyckinck. New York, 1865. 
The Patriot Chief. A Tragedy. [By Peter Markoe ?] Philadelphia, 1784. 
Effusions of Female Fancy. Consisting of Elegys, and Other Original 

Essays in Poetry. New York, 1784. 
The Lyric Works of Horace, Translated into English Verse : to which 

are added, A Number of Original Poems. By a Native of America 

[J. Parke]. Philadelphia, 1786. 
The Poems of Arouet. Q. B. Ladd.] Charleston, S. C, 1786. 
The Literary Remains of Joseph Brown Ladd, M.D. To which is pre- 
fixed, a Sketch of the Author's Life. New York, 1832. 
The Buds of Beauty ; or, Parnassian Sprigs. By Augustus Chatterton 

Baltimore, 1787. 
Miscellaneous Poems. By Peter Markoe Philadelphia, 1787. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY — REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD. 341 

The Times. A Poem. By Peter Markoe. Philadelphia, 1788. 

The Federalist : A Collection of Essays, written in Favour of the New 
Constitution. New York, 1788. 

The Beauties of Religion. A Poem. Addressed to Youth. In Five 
Books. By Elijah Fitch, A.M. Providence, 1789. 

Poems Dramatic and Miscellaneous. By Mrs. M. Warren. Boston, 
1790. 

The History of the Province of Massachuset's Bay [from 1628 to 1774]. 
By Mr. Hutchinson. [Vol. I., Boston, 1764; Vol. II., Boston, 1767; 
Vol. III., London, 1828.] 

The History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment, of the Inde- 
pendence of the United States of America. By William Gordon, 
D.D. London, 1788. [4 vols.] 

The History of the American Revolution. By David Ramsay, M.D. of 
South Carolina. In Two Volumes. Philadelphia, 1789. [Reprinted : 
London, 1791, 1793.] 

History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revo- 
lution. By Mrs. Mercy Warren. Boston, 1805. [3 vols.] 



D. 



REFERENCE LIST OF BOOKS AND ARTICLES. 

[Some of the dates are dates of copyright, not of imprint, as access to first 
editions was not possible in all cases. ** H. & M." stands for **Houghton, Mifflin 
& Co." The American Men of Letters Series, the American Statesmen Series, 
and the American Religious Leaders Series are published by that house. The 
Makers of America Series is published by Dodd, Mead & Co. For school use 
the Old South Leaflets (address Directors of the Old South Work, Old South 
Meeting-house, Boston) contain several interesting selections from the earlier 
writings; the Riverside Literature Series (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) supplies 
much material, well edited and inexpensive; the English Classics Series (May- 
nard, Merrill & Co.) furnishes cheap editions of several works; in Little Master- 
pieces (Doubleday & McClure), Poe, Hawthorne, Irving, Lincoln, Franklin, 
and Webster are represented; Macmillan & Co. announce, as in pressor in prep- 
aration, editions of writings by some twenty authors, in their Pocket Series of 
American Classics; some of Phillips's speeches and lectures are published sep- 
arately by Lee & Shepard; nine of Webster's orations, with notes, are published 
by Heath & Co. ; Hodgkins's leaflets (Heath & Co.) for the laboratory study of 
several American authors will be found helpful. For more magazine articles, 
consult Poole's Index; for essays, the " A. L. A." Index.] 

I. GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

Historical Works. — Narrative and Critical History of America, 
edited by Justin Winsor (H. & M., 1889; 8 vols.). The Discovery of 
America, by John Fiske (H. & M., 1892; 2 vols.). Enghsh Colonies 
in America, by J. A. Doyle (Holt, 1882-1889 ; 3 vols.). Old Virginia 
and her Neighbours, by John Fiske (H. & M., 1897; 2 vols.). Virginia, 
by J. E. Cooke, in American Commonwealths Series (H. & M., 1883). 
American History told by Contemporaries [1492-1783] , edited by A. B. 
Ha*rt (Macmillan, 1897 ; 2 vols.). The Beginnings of New England, by 
John Fiske (H. & M., 1889). The American Revolution, by John Fiske 
(H. & M., 1891 ; 2 vols.) . The Critical Period of American History [1783- 
1789] , by John Fiske (H. & M., 1888) . History of the United States of 
America [1783-1861] , by James Schouler (Dodd, Mead & Co., 1880- 
1891; 5 vols.). A History of the People of the United States [1783- 
1861], by J. B. McMaster (Appleton, 1883-1899; 5 vols, out; to be 
completed in 6). History of the United States [1850-1862], by J. F- 

342 



REFERENCE LIST OF BOOKS AND ARTICLES. 343 

Rhodes (Harper, 1892-1895 ; 3 vols.). The History of the Last Quarter 
Century in the United States, by E. B. Andrews (Scribner, 1896 ; 2 vols.). 
Women of Colonial and Revolutionary Times (Scribner, 1897; the 
series includes Margaret Winthrop, Martha Washington, Dorothy P. 
Madison, Mercy O. Warren, Eliza Pinckney, Catherine Schuyler). 
Men, W^omen, and Manners in Colonial Times, by S. G. Fisher (Lip- 
pincott, 1897 ; 2- vols.). Costumes of Colonial Times, by Alice M. Earle 
(Scribner, 1894). Colonial Dames and Good Wives, by Alice M. 
Earle (H. & M., 1895). English Culture in Virginia in Johns Hopkins 
University Studies in Historical and Political Science, Seventh Series 
(Baltimore, 1889). White Aprons, a Romance of Bacon's Rebellion, 
by Maud W. Goodwin (Little, Brown & Co., 1896). New England 
Two Centuries Ago, by J. R. Lowell, in Literary Essays, Vol. H. My 
Lady Pokahontas, by J. E. Cooke (H. & M., 1885). Customs and 
Fashions in Old New England, by Alice M. Earle (Scribner, 1894). 
The Sabbath in Puritan New England, by Alice M. Earle (Scribner, 
1891). Merry-Mount; a Romance of the Massachusetts Colony, by 
J. L. Motley (Munroe & Co., 1848; 2 vols.). Mary Dyer the Quaker 
Martyr, by Horatio Rogers (Providence: Preston & Rounds, 1896). 
Samuel Sewall and the World he hved in, by N. H. Chamberlain 
(De Wolfe, Fiske &Co., 1897). Witchcraft, by J. R. Lowell, in Lit- 
erary Essays, Vol. IL Were the Salem Witches Guiltless? and Some 
Neglected Characteristics of the New England Puritans, by Barrett Wen- 
dell, in SteUigeri (Scribner, 1893). Colonial Days in Old New York, 
by Alice M. Earle (Scribner, 1896). The Half Moon Series, Papers 
on Historic New York (Putnam, 1897-1898). The Governor's Gar- 
den, a Relation of Some Passages in the Life of Thomas Hutchinson, 
by G. R. R. Rivers (Joseph Knight, 1896). Richard Carvel, by Winston 
Churchill (Macmillan, 1899), and Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker, by 
S. W. Mitchell (Century Co., 1897), novels of the American Revo- 
lution. A Century of Social Betterment, by J. B. McMaster, Atlantic 
Monthly, January, 1897. A Boy Sixty Years Ago, by G. F. Hoar (Perry 
Mason & Co ; reprinted from the Youth's Companion, March 10, 17, 
24, 1898). Cambridge Thirty Years Ago [i.e. 1824] , by J. R. Lowell, in 
Literary Essays, Vol. I. A History of the Unitarians in the United 
States, by J. H. Allen, in American Church History Series, Vol. X. 
(New York: Christian Literature Co., 1894). Transcendentahsm in 
New England, by O. B. Frothingham (Putnam, 1876). The New 
England Reformers, by R. W. Emerson, in Works, Vol. HL His- 
toric Notes of Life and Letters in New England, by R. W. Emerson, 
in Works, Vol. X. (the Transcendental movement). The American 
Scholar, by R. W. Emerson, in Works, Vol. L The Transcendentalist, 
by R. W. Emerson, in Works, Vol. L Radical Problems, by C. A. Bartol 
(Boston, 1872; Transcendentalism, pp. 61-97). Reminiscences of 
Brook Farm, by G. P. Bradford, Century Magazine, November, 1892. 
The Old South, Essays Social and Political, by T. N. Page (Scribner, 



344 APPENDIX. 

1892). Southern Sidelights, by Edward Ingle (Crowell, 1896; No. X., 
in Library of Economics and Politics, edited by R. T. Ely). The 
Peculiarities of the South, by Professor N. S. Shaler, North American 
Review, October, 1890. 

Histories of American Literature. — A History of American Litera- 
ture, 1607-1765, by M. C. Tyler (Putnam, 1878; 2 vols. ; Agawam edi- 
tion, I vol.). The Literary History of the American Revolution, 1763- 
1783, by M. C. Tyler (Putnam, 1897; 2 vols.). American Literature, 
1607-1885, by C. F. Richardson (Putnam, 1887, 1889; 2 vols. ; popular 
edition, i vol.). American Literature: an Historical Sketch, 1620- 
1880, by John Nichol, professor in the University of Glasgow (A. & C. 
Black, 1882). Early Poetiy of the Provinces, now Part of the United 
States, by J. F. Hunneweil, in The Club of Odd Volumes, No. L (Boston, 
1894). ^^ I3. Litterature et des Hommes de Lettres des Etats-Unis 
d'Amerique, par Eugene A. Vail (Paris, 1841). Geschichte der Eng- 
lischen Litteratur im Neunzehnten Jahrhundert, von Karl Bleibtren 
(Leipzig, 1887 ; Die amerikanische Poesie, pp. 394-505 ; Bret Harte, 
pp. 564-572). Geschichte der Nordamerikanischen Litteratur, von 
Karl Knortz (Berlin, 1891 ; 2 vols.). Geschichte der Nordamer- 
ikanischen Litteratur, von Eduard Engel (Leipzig, 1897). Beitrage zur 
Amerikanischen Litteratur- und Kultur-Geschichte, von E. P. Evans 
(Stuttgart, 1898). Chronological Outlines of American Literature, by 
S. L. Whitcomb (Macmillan, 1894). American Literature and Other 
Papers, by E. P. Whipple (Ticknor & Co., 1887). American Literature, 
by C. D. Warner, in The United States of America, Vol. IL (Appleton, 
1894). The History of Printing in America, by Isaiah Thomas (Albany, 
1874, second edition ; Vols. V., VI., of Transactions and Collections of 
the American Antiquarian Society). Journalism in the United States 
from 1690 to 1872, by Frederick Hudson (Harper, 1873). Philadelphia 
Magazines and their Contributors, 1741-1850, by A. H. Smyth (Lind- 
say, 1892). History of the American Theatre, by G. O. Seilhamer (F. 
P. Harper, 1896; 3 vols.). History of Oratory, by Lorenzo "Sears 
(Griggs & Co., 1896). On the Development of American Literature 
from 1815 to 1833, with especial reference to Periodicals, by W. B. Cairns 
(Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis., 1898). 

Biographical Cyclopcedias and Dictionaries. — A Critical Dictionary 
of English Literature and British and American Authors, by S. A. Alli- 
bone (Lippincott, 1858-1871 ; 4 vols.) ; Supplement, by J. F. Kirk (1891 ; 
2 vols.). Appleton 's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, edited by 
J. G. Wilson and John Fiske (Appleton, 1886-1889; 6 vols.). The 
National Cyclopaedia of American Biography (White & Co., 1891 ; 2 
vols.). A Dictionary of American Authors, by O. F. Adams (H. & M., 
1897). National Portrait Gallery, by E. A. Duyckinck (New York, 
1867 ; 2 vols.). 

Reminiscences, Authors' Homes, etc. — American Bookmen, by M. A. 
DeWolfe Howe (Dodd, Mead & Co., 1898). Bryant and his Friends, 



REFERENCE LIST OF BOOKS AND ARTICLES. 345 

by J. G. Wilson (Ford, Howard & Hulbert, 1886 ; reminiscences, etc., 
of Bryant, Paulding, Irving, Dana, Cooper, Halleck, Drake, Willis, 
Poe, Taylor, and minor "Knickerbockers"). Personal Recollections 
of Notable People, by C. K. Tuckerman (Dodd, Mead & Co., 1895 ; 

2 vols.; Vol. I., Chaps. I.-IIL, Boston and New York Men of Letters). 
Recollections of a Literary Life, by Mary R. Mitford (London, 1852; 

3 vols.; Chapr. VI., American Poets). Biographical Notes and Per- 
sonal Sketches, by J. T. Fields (H. & M., 1881 ; reminiscences and let- 
ters of American authors). Authors and Friends, by Mrs. J. T. Fields 
(H. & M. ; recollections of Longfellow, Emerson, Holmes, Mrs. Stowe, 
Whittier, etc.). Recollections of Eminent Men, by E. P. Whipple 
(Ticknor & Co., 1887; Choate, Agassiz, Emerson, Motley, Sumner, 
Ticknor). Essays from the Easy Chair, by G. W. Curtis (Harper, 1892- 
1894; 3 series; Everett, Emerson, Thoreau, Phillips, Bryant, Beecher, 
Hawthorne, and Brook Farm). Chapters from a Life, by Elizabeth S. 
Phelps (H. & M., 1896; reminiscences of Mrs. Stowe, Longfellow, 
Whittier, Holmes, etc.). Cheerful Yesterdays, by T. W. Higginson 
(H. & M., 1899; reminiscences of many men of letters). Remi- 
niscences, by JuHa Ward Howe (H. & M., 1899). Homes of American 
Authors, comprising Anecdotical, Personal, and Descriptive Sketches, 
by G. W. Curtis and others (Putnam, 1852). Little Journeys to the 
Homes of American Authors, by Curtis, Hillard, Bryant, etc. (Put- 
nam, 1896). Homes and Haunts of our Elder Poets, by R. H. 
Stoddard, F. B. Sanborn, and H. N. Powers (Appleton, 1881). Authors 
at Home, edited by J. L. and J. B. Gilder (Cassell, 1888; reprinted 
from the Critic). 

Collections of Selections. — Cyclopaedia of American Literature [1608- 
1855], by E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck (Scribner, 1855; 2 vols.; biog- 
raphies, criticisms, selections). A Library of American Literature 
[1608-1889] , edited by E. C. Stedman and E. M. Hutchinson (W^ebster 
& Co., 1887-1890; II vols.; Vol. XI. has brief biographies). Southern 
Literature [1608-1895] , with Copious Extracts and Criticisms, by Louise 
Manly (Richmond: Johnson Pubhshing Co., 1895). Specimens of 
American Poetry [1660-1829] , by Samuel Kettell (Boston, 1829 ; 3 vols. ; 
biographical notices). The Poets and Poetry of America [1640-1860], 
by R. W. Griswold (Philadelphia, i860; first edition, 1842; biographies, 
criticisms, selections). The Female Poets of America, by T. B. Read 
(Philadelphia, 1849; nineteenth-century authors only; short biographi- 
cal notices, portraits, selections). The Female Poets of America [1650- 
1869], by R. W. Griswold (New York, 1869; first edition, 1849; revised 
by R. H. Stoddard; biographies, criticisms, selections). A Library of 
Poetry and Song, with an introduction by W. C. Bryant (Ford & Co., 
187 1). American Song, a Collection of Representative American Poems, 
by A. B. Simonds (Putnam, 1894). The Golden Treasury of American 
Songs and Lyrics, edited by F. L. Knowles (Page & Co., 1898). Ameri- 
can Sonnets, selected and edited by T. W. Higginson and E. H. Bigelow 



346 APPENDIX. 

(H. & M., 1890). Poems of American Patriotism, chosen by J. Brander 
Matthews (Scribner, 1882). American War Ballads and Lyrics [colonial 
wars to Civil War] , edited by G. C. Eggleston (Putnam, 1889 '» Knicker- 
bocker Nuggets Series ; 2 vols.). War Songs of the South (Richmond : 
West & Johnston, 1862). Poetry, Lyrical, Narrative, and Satirical, of 
the Civil War, selected and edited by R. G. White (American News 
Co., 1866). Bugle-Echoes, a Collection of the Poetry of the Civil War, 
Northern and Southern, edited by F. F. Browne (White, Stokes & 
Allen, 1886; new edition). Songs and Ballads of the Southern People, 
1861-1865, by Frank Moore (Appleton, 1886). War Poetry of the 
South, edited by W. G Simms (New York, 1867). Younger American 
Poets [1830-1890] , edited by D. Sladen, with an Appendix of Younger 
Canadian Poets, edited by G. B. Roberts (Cassell, 1891). The Prose 
Writers of America, by R. W. Griswold (Porter & Coates, 1870 ; re- 
vised; first edition, 1847; biographies, criticisms, selections). Repre- 
sentative American Orations [1775-1881] , edited by Alexander Johnston, 
reedited by J. A. Woodburn (Putnam, 1896, 1897; 4 vols.). 

Criticisms of Authors and Discussions of Topics. — Poets of America, 
by E. C. Stedman (H. & M., 1885). Studies of Great Authors, from the 
Library of the World's Best Literature (Doubleday & McClure, 1899 J 
4 vols.). Short Studies of American Authors, by T. W. Higginson (Lee 
& Shepard, 1880 ; Hawthorne, Poe, Thoreau, Howells, Helen Jackson, 
James). American Humorists, by H. R. Haweis (Chatto & Windus, 
1883; Irving, Holmes, Lowell, Artemus W^ard, Mark Twain, Bret 
Harte). My Literary Passions, by W. D. Howells (Harper, 1895; Irv- 
ing, Longfellow, Mrs. Stowe, D. G. Mitchell, Lowell, Curtis, Hawthorne). 
American Writers of To-Day, by H. C. Vedder (Silver, Burdett & Co., 
1894). The History of Historical Writing in America, by J. F. Jameson 
(H. & M., 1891). The Development of the Love of Romantic Scenery 
in America, by Mary E. WooUey, American Historical Review, October, 
1897. Americanism in Literature, in Views and Reviews, by W. G. 
Simms (Wiley & Putnam, 1845) . Americanism in Literature, in Atlan- 
tic Essays, by T. W. Higginson (Osgood, 1874). Our Literature, by 
J. R. Lowell, in Literary and Political Addresses. American Literature, 
by Barrett Wendell, in Stelligeri and Other Essays (Scribner, 1893). 
The Influence of Democracy on Literature; and Has America pro- 
duced a Poet? in Questions at Issue, by Edmund Gosse (Appleton, 
1893). Two Principles in Recent American Fiction, by J. L. Allen, 
Atlantic Monthly, October, 1897. Literary Emancipation of the West, 
by Hamlin Garland, Forum, October, 1893. The New World and the 
New Book, by T. W. Higginson (Lee & Shepard, 1891; essays on 
American literary topics). The American Historical Novel, by P. L. 
Ford, Atlantic Monthly, December, 1897. American Humour, in Lost 
Leaders, by Andrew Lang (Paul, Trench & Co., 1892). Dialect in 
Literature, by James Whitcomb Riley, Forum, December, 1892. 

Bibliographies and Catalogues. — Bibliotheca Americana, a Dictionary 



REFERENCE LIST OF BOOKS AND ARTICLES. 347 

of Books relating to America, by Joseph Sabin (Sabin, 1868-1891 ; 19 
vols.; A to Simms). A Catalogue of the Harris Collection of American 
Poetry, by J. C. Stockbridge (Providence, 1886). A Catalogue of Books 
relating to North and South America in the Library of John Carter 
Bro^v^l of Providence, R. I., with Notes, by J. R. Bartlett (Providence, 
1865-1882; 6 vols.). American Authors [1795-1895], a Bibliography 
of First and Notable Editions chronologically arranged, with Notes, by 
P. K. Foley (Boston, 1897). 

II. INDIVIDUAL AUTHORS. 

John Adams. — Works, with a life, by C. F. Adams (Little, Brown & 
Co., 1856; 10 vols.). Familiar Letters of John Adams and his Wife, 
edited by C. F. Adams (H. & M., 1875). Life, by J. T. Morse, Jr., in 
American Statesmen Series, 1885. John Adams, with Other Essays and 
Addresses, by Mellen Chamberlain (H. & M., 1898). 

Samuel Adams. — Life and Public Services, with Extracts from his 
Correspondence, State Papers, and Political Essays, by W. V. Wells 
(Little, Brown & Co., 1865 ; 3 vols.). Life, by J. K. Hosmer, in Ameri- 
can Statesmen Series, 1885. 

Louis Agassiz. — Life and Correspondence, edited by Elizabeth C. 
Agassiz (H. & M., 1885; 2 vols.). Life and Work, by C. F. Holder 
(Putnam, 1893). 

A. Bronson Alcott. — Concord Days (Roberts Bros., 1872). Table 
Talk (Roberts Bros., 1877). New Connecticut, an Autobiographical 
Poem (Roberts Bros., 188 1) . His Life and Philosophy, by F. B. Sanborn 
and W. T. Harris (Roberts Bros., 1893; 2 vols.). 

T. B. Aldrich. — Poetical Works, New Riverside Edition, 2 vols.; 
Poems, Household Edition (H. & M.). 

Fisher Ames. — Works, edited by Seth Ames (Little, Brown «& Co., 
1854 ; 2 vols.). 

J. y. Audubon. — Life, edited by his Widow (Putnam, 1868). Audu- 
bon and his Journals, by Maria R. Audubon (Scribner, 1897 ; 2 vols.). 

George Bancroft. — History of the United States (Appleton, 1885; 
6 vols.). 

Joel Barlow. — lAfQ and Letters, by C. B. Todd (Putnam, 1886) „ 
Three Men of Letters, by M. C. Tyler (Putnam, 1895). 

H. W. Beecker. — Fatriotic Addresses, 1850-1885 (Fords, Howard & 
Hulbert, 1887). Biography, by W. C. Beecher (Bromfield, 1889). 

G. H. Boker. — Works (Lippincott). 

Anne Bradstreet. — Anne Bradstreet and her Time, by Helen Camp- 
bell (Lothrop, 1891). 

C. B. Brown. — Novels (McKay, 1887; 6 vols.). Life, by William 
Dunlap (Philadelphia, 1815; 2 vols.). Memoir, by W. H. Prescott, 
in Biographical and Critical Miscellanies, Vol. IV. (Lippincott, 1845; 
reprinted from Sparks's American Biography, 1834). 



348 APPENDIX. 

Cc F, Browne (*'Artemus Ward"). — Complete Works (Dilling* 

ham &Co., 1898). 

W, C. Bryant. — Life and Works, edited by Parke Godwin (Apple- 
ton, 1883-1884; 6 vols.: I, 2, biography; 3, 4, poetical works with 
copious notes; 5, 6, prose writings). Poetical Works, Library Edi- 
tion (Appleton, 1878). Poetical Works, Household Edition (^Appleton, 
1878). Translation of the Iliad and the Odyssey (H. & M., 1870, 1871). 
Orations and Addresses, Vol. IIL, by G. W. Curtis (Harper, 1894). 
Commemorative Addresses, by Parke Godwin (Harper, 1895). Pro- 
ceedings at the Centennial Celebration, August, 1894, at Cummington 
(Bryant Centennial Committee, Cummington, Mass.). Life, by John 
Bigelow, in American Men of Letters Series, 1890. A Biographical 
Sketch, by A. J. Symington (Harper, 1880). The Origin of a Great 
Poem, by J. W. Chadwick, Harper's Magazine, September, 1894 (con- 
tains first form of Thanatopsis). 

y. C. Calhoun. — \\for\is, edited by R. K. Cralle (Appleton, 1851-1855 ; 
6 vols.). Life, by H. von Hoist, in American Statesmen Series, 1883. 

Alice and Phoebe Cary. — Poems, Ballads, Lyrics, and Hymns, by 
Alice Cary (H. & M.). A Lover's Diary, by Alice Cary (Ticknor & 
Fields, 1868). 

W, E. Channing. — Complete Works (Boston, American Unitarian 
Association, 1886). Memoir, by W. H. Channing (Boston: Crosby & 
Nichols, 1848; 3 vols.). Reminiscences of, by Elizabeth P. Peabody 
(Roberts Bros., 1877). W. E. Channing, by C. T. Brooks (Roberts Bros., 
1880). Memorial and Biographical Sketches, by J. F. Clarke (H & M.). 

Lydia M. C^//^. — Letters (H. & M., 1882). 

Rufus Choate, — Addresses and Orations (Little, Brown & Co., 1878). 
Works, with a Memoir, by S. G. Brown (Little, Brown & Co., 1862; 
2 vols.). 

y. F. 67(2r>^^. --Autobiography, Diary, and Correspondence, edited 
by E. E. Hale (H. & M., 1891). 

Henry Clay. — Life, by Carl Schurz, in American Statesmen Series, 
1887 (2 vols.). Life and Speeches (Greeley & McElrath, 1843; 2 vols.), 

y. F. Cooper. — Novels, Mohawk Edition (Putnam, 1896; 32 vols.). 
Novels, Library Edition (Appleton, 1886-1899; 32 vols.). Works, 
Household Edition (H. & M. ; 32 vols.). Life, by T. R. Lounsbury, in 
American Men of Letters Series, 1882 (has bibliography). Commemo- 
rative Discourse, by W. C. Bryant, in Prose Writings, Vol. L Views 
and Reviews, by W. G. Simms (Wiley & Putnam, 1845). ^i^ Literary 
Offences, in How to tell a Story and Other Essays, by Mark Twain 
(Harper, 1897). 

G. W. Curtis. — Orations and Addresses, edited by C. E. Norton 
(Harper, 1894 ; 3 vols.). Life, by Edward Cary, in American Men of 
Letters Series, 1894. A Eulogy, by William Winter (Macmillan, 1893). 
An Address, by J. W. Chadwick (Harper, 1893). Commemorative 
Addresses, by Parke Godwin (Harper, 1895). 



REFERENCE LIST OF BOOKS AND ARTICLES. 349 

R, H. Dana. — Poems and Prose Writings (Baker & Scribner, 1850; 
2 vols.).- 

Orvllle Dewey. — Autobiography and Letters, edited by Mary E. 
Dewey (Roberts Bros., 1883). 

Emily Dickinson, — Poems (Roberts Bros., 1891 ; second series, 1892, 
third series, i8g6). Letters (Roberts Bros., 1894; 2 vols.). 

y. R. Drake. ^ The Culprit Fay, in Ariel Booklets Series (Putr,am, 
1899). 

Jonathan Edwards. — Works (New York: Carvill, 1830; lo vols.). 
Life, by A. V. G. Allen, in American Religious Leaders Series, 1889. 

R. W. Emerson. — Works, Standard Library Edition (H. & M., 1883- 
1887; 14 vols.; Vols. XIII., XIV., contain Memoir, by J. E. Cabot). 
Two Unpublished Essays, with an Introduction by E. E. Hale (Little, 
Brown & Co.). The Correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson, 1834- 
1872 (Osgood & Co., 1883; 2 vols.). Supplementally Letters (Ticknor 
& Co., 1886). Letters and Passages from Letters to a Friend, 1838- 
1853, edited by C. E. Norton (H. & M., 1899). A Memoir, by J. E. 
Cabot (H. & M., 1887; 2 vols.). Life, by O. W. Holmes, in American 
Men of Letters Series, 1885. Life, by Richard Garnett, in Great Writers 
Series (Scott, 1888 ; has bibhography by J. P. Anderson, British Mu- 
seum). His Maternal Ancestors, with some Reminiscences of him, by 
D. G. Haskins (Cupples, Upham & Co., 1887). Emerson in Concord, 
by E. W. Emerson (H. & M., 1888). Talks with, by C. J. Woodbury 
(Baker & Taylor, 1890). Emerson at Home and Abroad, by M. D. 
Conway (Osgood & Co., 1882). A Biographical Sketch, Personal 
Recollections of his Visits to England, etc., by Alexander Ireland 
(Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1882). A Western Journey with ^ by J. B. 
Thayer (Little, Brown & Co., 1884). Emerson, the Lecturer, by J. R. 
Lowell, in Literary Essays, Vol. I. Partial Portraits, by Henry James 
(Macmillan, 1888). Emerson as an American, in Confessions and 
Criticisms, by Julian Hawthorne (Ticknor & Co., 1887). His Life, 
Writings, and Philosophy, by G. W. Cooke (Osgood & Co., 1881). 
An Estimate of his Character and Genius, by A. Bronson Alcott 
(Williams & Co., 1882). Genius and Character of (Osgood & Co., 
1885; lectures at the Concord School of Philosophy, 1884). Neue 
Essays iiber Kunst und Literatur, by Herman Grimm (Berlin, 1865). 
Literature, by Herman Grimm (Cupples, Upham & Co., 1885). The 
Religion of the Future, by J. B. Crozier (London, 1880). Emerson 
and the Superlative, by John Burroughs (Osgood, 1882). As a Poet, by 
Joel Benton (Holbrook & Co., 1883). Emerson and Carlyle; and 
Emerson as a Poet; by E. P. Whipple, in American Literature and 
Other Papers (Ticknor & Co., 1887). An Essay, by John Morley 
(Macmillan, 1884). Discourses in America, by Matthew Arnold (Mac- 
millan, 1885). Optimism of, by W. F. Dana (Cupples, Upham & Co., 
1886). Men and Letters, by H. E. Scudder (H. & M., 1887). Obiter 
Dicta, second series, by Augustine Birrell (Scribner, 1887). Phases of 



3SO APPENDIX. 

Thought and Criticism, by Brother Azarias (H. & M., 1892). Literary 
and Social Essays, by G. W. Curtis (Harper, 1895). Birds and Poets, 
by John Burroughs (H. & M., 1897). Emerson and Other Essays, by 
J. J. Chapman (Scribner, 1898). 

Edward Everett. — Orations and Speeches (Little, Brown & Co., 
1850-1868; 4 vols.). 

Benjamin Franklin. — Life, Written by himself, now First Edited from 
Original Manuscripts and from his Printed Correspondence and Other 
Writings, by John Bigelow (Lippincott, 1874; 3 vols.). Poor Richard's 
Almanack, in the Thumb-Nail Series (Century Co., 1898). The Many- 
Sided Franklin, by P. L. Ford (Century Co., 1899). The True Ben- 
jamin Franklin, by S. G. Fisher (Lippincott, 1899). Lif^* by J. T, 
Morse, Jr., in American Statesmen Series, 1889. Life, by J. B. McMaster, 
in American Men of Letters Series, 1887. Franklin in France, by E. E. 
Hale and E. E. Hale, Jr. (Roberts Bros., 1887). Causeries du Lundi, 
tome septieme, par C.-A. Sainte-Beuve (Paris). English Portraits, by 
C.-A. Sainte-Beuve (Holt, 1875). 

U, S. Grant. — Feisonal Memoirs (Webster & Co., 1885; 2 vols.). 

^sa Gray. — Letters, edited by Jane L. Gray (H. & M., 1893). 

E.- G. Halleck. — Poetical Writings (Appleton, 1869). Life and Letters, 
by J. G. Wilson (Appleton, 1869). Commemorative Discourse, by 
W. C. Bryant, in Prose Writings, Vol. L 

Alexander Hamilton. — Works, edited by J. C. Hamilton (Francis & 
Co., 1851; 7 vols.). Federahst, edited by P. L. Ford (Holt, 1898). 
Federalist, edited by H. C. Lodge (Putnam, 1888). Life, by J. C. 
Hamilton (Appleton, 1834; 2 vols.). Life, by J. T. Morse, Jr. (Little, 
Brown & Co., 1876 ; 2 vols.). Life, by H. C. Lodge, in American States- 
men Series, 1883. Life, by W. G. Sumner, in Makers of America Series. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne. — Works, Standard Library Edition (H. & M., 
1882-1884; 15 vols.). Vols. XIV., XV., contain Nathaniel Hawthorne 
and his Wife, a Biography, by Julian Hawthorne. Works, Popular 
Edition (H. & M.; 8 vols.). Hawthorne's First Diary, with an Ac- 
count of its Discovery and Loss, by S. T. Pickard (H. & M., 1897). 
An Analytical Index to the Works of (H. & M., 1882). Nathaniel 
Hawthorne and his Wife, a Biography, by Julian Hawthorne (H. & M., 
1884; 2 vols.). Life, by Henry James, Jr., in English Men of Letters 
Series (Harper, 1880). Life, by M. D. Conway, in Great Writers Series 
(Scott; has bibliography by J. P. Anderson, British Museum). Yes- 
terdays with Authors, by J. T. Fields (H. & M., 1871). Hawthorne, 
by J. T. Fields (Osgood, 1871). Personal Recollections of, by Horatio 
Bridge (Harper, 1893). Memories of, by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop 
(H. & M., 1897). Character and Characteristic Men, by E. P. 
Whipple (Osgood, 1866). Contes etranges imites d'Hawthorne par 
E. A. Spoil, precedes d'une etude par E. Montegut (Clichy, 1866). 
Essays, Vol. II., by R. H. Hutton (Strahan & Co., 1871). Poets and 
Novelists, by G. B. Smith (Appleton, 1875). A Study of, by G. P. 



REFERENCE LIST OF BOOKS AND ARTICLES, 351 

Lathrop (Osgood, 1876). Problems of the Scarlet Letter, by Julian 
Hawthorne, Atlantic Monthly, April, 1886. Literary Sketches, by H. 
S. Salt (London, 1888). Hours in a Library, Vol. L, by Leslie Stephen 
(Putnam, 1894). Literary and Social Essays, by G. W. Curtis (Harper, 

1895). 

P. H. Hayne. — Poems (Lothrop, 1882). 

Patrick Henry. — Life, Correspondence, and Speeches, by W. W. 
Henry (Scribner, 1891; 3 vols.). Life, by M. C. Tyler, in American 
Statesmen Series, 1888. 

Francis Higginson. — Life, by T. W. Higginson, in Makers of 
America Series, 1891. 

y. G. Holland. — Complete Works (Scribner, 1867-1895 ; 16 vols.). 

(9. W. Holmes. — V\for\is, Standard Library Edition (H. & M., 1892- 
1896; 15 vols.; Vols. XIV., XV., contain Life and Letters, by J. T. 
Morse, Jr.). Complete Poetical Works, Cambridge Edition (H. & M.). 
Life and Letters, by J. T. Morse, Jr. (H. & M., 1896). Letters to a 
Classmate, Century Magazine, October, 1897. O. W. Holmes, by 
Walter Jerrold (Macmillan, 1893). Literary and Social Essays, by 
G. W. Curtis (Harper, 1895). Studies of a Biographer, Vol. II., 
by Leslie Stephen (Putnam, 1898). 

Thomas Hooker. — Life, by G. L. Walker, in Makers of America 
Series, 1891. 

Washington Irving. — Works (Putnam : New Knickerbocker Edition, 
40 vols., 1891-1897; People's Edition, 23 vols., 1850-1868). Life and 
Letters, by P. M. Irving (Putnam, 1862-1863; 4 vols.). Life, by C. D. 
Warner, in American Men of Letters Series, 1881. Commemorative 
Discourse, by W. C. Bryant, in Prose Writings, Vol. I. Nil Nisi 
Bonum, by W. M. Thackeray, in Roundabout Papers. Studies, by 
C. D. Warner, W. C. Bryant, G. P. Putnam (Putnam, 1880). Literary 
and Social Essays, by G. W. Curtis (Harper, 1895). 

Thomas Jefferson. — Writings, edited by P. L. Ford (Putnam, 1892- 
1898; 9 vols, out; to be completed in 10). Life, by J. T. Morse, 
Jr., in American Statesmen Series, 1884. Life, by James Schouler, in 
Makers of America Series, 1893. Life, by H. S. Randall (Lippincott, 
1857; 3 vols.). 

J. P. Kennedy. — Hie, by H. T. Tuckerman (Putnam, 1871). 

James Kent. — Memoirs and Letters, by William Kent (Little, Bro\vn 
&Co., 1898). 

Sidney Lanier. — Poems, edited by his Wife, with a Memorial by 
W. H. Ward (Scribner, 1884). Select Poems, edited, with introduc- 
tion, life, and notes, by Morgan Callaway, Jr. (Scribner, 1895). Letters, 
Atlantic Monthly, July, August, 1894. Life, by W. M. Baskervill, in 
Southern Writers Series (Nashville : Barbee & Smith, 1897). 

Emma Lazarus. — Poems, with Biographical Sketch (H. & M., 1889; 
2 vols.). 

Abraham Lincoln. — Complete Works, edited by J. G. Nicoiay and 



352 APPENDIX. 

John Hay (Century Co., 1894; 2 vols.). Life, by J. G. Nicolay and 
John Hay (Century Co., 1890; 10 vols.). Life, by J. T. Morse, Jr., in 
American Statesmen Series, 1893 (2 vols.). History and Personal Rec- 
ollections of, by W. H. Herndon, his Law Partner (Belford, Clarke & 
Co., 1889; 3 vols.). Life, by Ida M. Tarbell (Doubleday & McClure, 
1899). Reminiscences of, by Distinguished Men of his Time (New 
York, published by the North American Review, 1885). Abraham 
Lincoln [1864-1865] , by J. R. Lowell, in Political Essays. An Essay 
by Carl Schurz (H. & M., 1891). 

D.R.Locke (" petroleum V. Nasby"). — Works (Lee & Shepard, 
1866-1890). 

H. W. Longfe How. ~Woi\iS, Standard Library Edition (H. & M., 
1886-1891; 14 vols.; Vols. XHL-XV. contain Life and Final Memo- 
rials, by Samuel Longfellow). Complete Poetical Works, Cambridge 
Edition (H. & M.). Translation of the Divina Commedia (H. & 
M., 1867). Longfellow Collector's Handbook, a Bibliography of First 
Editions (New York: W. E. Benjamin, 1885). Life, by Samuel Long- 
fellow (Ticknor & Co., 1886; 2 vols.). Final Memorials, edited by 
Samuel Longfellow (Ticknor & Co., 1887 ; has bibliography, genealogy, 
etc.). Life, by Eric S. Robertson, in Great Writers Series (Scott, 1887; 
has bibliography by J. P. Anderson, British Museum). Seventy-fifth 
Birthday : Proceedings of the Maine Historical Society, Feb. 27, 1882 
(Portland: Hoyt, Fogg & Donham, 1882). His Life, his Work, his 
Friendships, by G. L. Austin (Lee & Shepard, 1882). A Biographical 
Sketch, by F. H. Underwood (Osgood, 1882). Old Shrines and Ivy, 
by William Winter (Macmillan, 1892). The Religion of our Literature, 
by George M'Crie (London, 1875). La Poesie en Am^rique, par Louis 
Depret (Lille, 1876). Etudes Americaines, par A. De Prins (Louvain, 
1877). Literar-historische Studie, von Karl Knortz (Hamburg, 1879). 
H. W. Longfellow, by Thomas Davidson (Little, Brown & Co., 1882). 
Estudios sobre Longfellow, por Victor SuarezCapalleja (Madrid, 1883). 
Tales of a Wayside Inn und ihre Quellen, von H. Vamhagen (Berlin, 
1884). His Art, and the Shaping of Excelsior, in Men and Letters, by 
H. E. Scudder (H. & M., 1887). Letters on Literature, by Andrew Lang 
(Longmans, 1889; second edition). Literary and Social Essays, by 
G. W. Curtis (Harper, 1895). 

y. R. Lowe//. — Works, Standard Library Edition (H. & M., 1892; 
II vols.). Poems, Cambridge Edition (H. & M.). Letters, edited by C. 
E. Norton (Harper, 1894; 2 vols.). A Biographical Sketch, by F. H. 
Underwood (Osgood, 1882). Contributions toward a Lowell Bibli- 
ography, The Literary World, June 27, 1885. Cannon Farrar on. Forum, 
October, 1891. R. H. Stoddard on. North American Review, October, 
1891. C. E. Norton on. Harper's Magazine, May, 1893. Lowell as a 
Teacher, by Barrett Wendell, in Stelligeri (Scribner, 1893). The Poet 
and the Man, Recollections and Appreciations, by F. H. Underwood 
C'Lee and Shepard, 1893). Lowell and his Friends, by E. E. Hale 



REFERENCE LIST OF BOOKS AND ARTICLES. 353 

(H. & M., 1899). Conversations with, in his last years, Atlantic Monthly, 
January, 1897. Essays in London and Elsewhere, by Henry James 
(Harper, 1893). Orations and Addresses, Vol. HI., by G. W. Curtis 
(Harper, 1894). Lowell as a Critic, in Excursions in Criticism, by 
William Watson (Macmillan, 1893), 

Cotton Mather. — Life, by Barrett Wendell, in Makers of America 
Series, 1891. 

y. L. Motley. — H'lsiones (Harper). Correspondence, edited by 
G. W. Curtis (Harper, 1889; 2 vols.). Memoir, by O. W. Holmes 
(H. &M., 1878). 

Margaret Fuller Ossoli. — Life Without and Life Within ; or Reviews, 
Narratives, Essays, and Poems, edited by A. B. Fuller (Brown, Taggard 
& Chase, 1859) . Memoirs, by J. F. Clarke, R. W. Emerson, W. H. 
Channing (Phillips, Sampson & Co., 1851 ; 2 vols.). Life, by Julia W. 
Howe, in Famous Women Series (Roberts Bros., 1883). Life, by T. 
W. Higginson, in American Men of Letters Series, 1884. 

James 6>//j.— Life, by William Tudor (Boston : Wells & Lyly, 1823). 

Thomas Paine. — Writings, edited by M. D. Conway (Putnam, 1894- 
1896; 4 vols.). Life, by M. D. Conway (Putnam, 1892; 2 vols.). 

Theodore Parke*-. — Critical and Miscellaneous Writings (Boston: 
Leighton, Jr., 1843). Works, edited by Frances P. Cobbe (Trtibner & 
Co., 1863-1865; 12 vols.). Life and Correspondence, by John Weiss 
(Appleton, 1863; 2 vols.). Life, by John Fiske, in American Religious 
Leaders Series. Memorial and Biographical Sketches, by J. F. Clarke 
(H. & M.). 

Francis Parkman. — Works (Little, Brown & Co., 1865-1898 ; 12 vols). 

T. W. Parsons. — VoQms (H. & M., 1893). 

y. K. Paulding. — Literary Life of, by W. I. Paulding (Scribner, 1867), 

y. G. Percival. — Poetical Works (Ticknor & Fields, 1859; 2 vols.). 
Literary Essays, Vol. H., by J. R. Lowell. 

Wendell Phillips. — Speeches, Lectures, and Letters (Lee & Shepard, 
1863, 1892; 2 vols.). Life and Times, by G. L. Austin (Lee & Shepard, 
1884) . Orations and Addresses, Vol. HL, by G. W. Curtis (Harper, 1894). 

E. A. Poe. — Works, edited by K C. Stedman and G. E. Woodberry 
(Stone & Kimball, 1 894-1 895 ; 10 vols.). Works, with Memoir, by 
J. H. Ingram (A. & C. Black, 1890, fourth edition; 4 vols.). Poems, 
with an Essay on his Poetry by Andrew Lang (Paul, Trench & Co., 
1881). Selections from his correspondence, Century Magazine, August, 
September, October, 1894. Life, by G. E. Woodberry, in American 
Men of Letters Series, 1885. Memoir, by R. W. Griswold, in Vol. HL 
of his edition of Poe's Works (New York: Redfield, 1850). Poe and 
his Critics, by Sarah H. Whitman (New York : Rudd & Carleton, i860). 
Memoir, by R. H, Stoddard, in his edition of Poe (New York : Widdle- 
ton, 1874). Life, by E. L. Didier, in his edition of Poe (New York: 
Widdleton, 1876). Life, by W. F. Gill (Chatto & Windus, 1877). 
Letters to Dead Authors, by Andrew Lang (Scribner, 1893). 
2A 



354 APPENDIX. 

W, H. Prescott. — Works (Lippincott, 1872-1875). Life, by George 
Ticknor (Ticknor & Fields, 1863). 

yosiah Quincy. — Speeches, edited by Edmund Quincy (Little, Brown 
& Co., 1874). 

yohn Randolph. — Life, by Henry Adams, in American Statesmen 
Series, 1883. Visits to, and Randolph in the Senate, in Figures of the 
Past, by Josiah Quincy (Roberts Bros., 1883). 

T, B, Read. — Poetical Works (Lippincott, 1866 ; 3 vols. ; revised edi- 
tion, I vol., 1882). 

Geo7'ge Ripley. — Life, by O. B. Frothingham, in American Men of 
Letters Series, 1883. 

Susanna Rowson. — Memoir, by Elias Nason (Albany, 1870) . 

J. G. Saxe. — "PoQms, Household Edition (H. & M.). 

Catharine M. Sedgwick. — Life and Letters (Harper, 1871). 

P. B. Shillaber. — Partingtonian Patchwork, etc. (Lee & Shepard, 
1872-1881). 

E. R. Sill. — Poems ; and the Hermitage, and Later Poems (H. & M.). 

W. G. Simms. — Poems (New York : Redfield, 1853 ; 2 vols.). Novels 
(Redfield, 1859; 18 vols.; Lovell, 1884-1886; 18 vols.). Life, by W. P. 
Trent, in American Men of Letters Series, 1892 (has bibliography). 

yohn Smith. — Works, edited by Edward Arber, in English Scholar's 
Library (Birmingham, 1884; 2 vols.). Life, by W. G. Simms (New 
York; Cooledge and Bro., 1846). Life, by C. D. Warner (Holt, 1881). 

yared Sparks. — Life and Writings, by H. B. Adams (H. & M., 1893 *» 
2 vols.). 

E. C. Stedman. — Prose and Poetical Works, 4 vols. ; Poems, House- 
hold Edition (H. & M.). 

R. H. Stoddard. — Poetical Writings (Scribner) . 

W. W. 6'/^rj/. — Poems (H. & M.; 2 vols.). Graffiti d' Italia (Scrib- 
ner, 1868) . 

H. B. Stowe. — \li^ and Letters, by Annie Fields (H. & M., 1897). 
Life, by C. E. Stowe (H. & M., 1889). Notes on Uncle Tom's Cabin : 
being a Logical Answer to its Allegations and Inferences against Slavery 
as an Institution, by Rev. E. J. Stearns (Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 
1853). Essays on Fiction, by N. W. Senior (Longman, 1864). 

Charles Sumner. — Works (Lee & Shepard, 1870-1883; 15 vols.). 
Memoir and Letters, by E. L. Pierce (Roberts Bros., 1877-1893; 
4 vols.). Life, by Moorefield Storey, in American Statesmen Series, 
1899. Memorial and Biographical Sketches, by J. F. Clarke (H. & M.). 
Orations and Addresses, Vol. III., by G. W. Curtis (Harper, 1894). 
Eulogy, by Carl Schurz (Lee & Shepard, 1874). 

Bayard Taylor. — Travels (Putnam, 1850-1889; 11 vols.). Novels 
(Putnam, 1862-1872; 5 vols.). Life and Poetical Works (H. & M. ; 6 
vols.). Life, by A. H. Smyth, in American Men of Letters Series, 1896. 
Life and Letters, edited by Marie Hansen-Taylor and H. E. Scudder 
(H. &M., 1884; 2 vols.). 



REFERENCE LIST OF BOOKS AND ARTICLES. 355 

H. D. Thoreau. — W or\^s, Riverside Edition (H. & M., 1854-1881; 
II vols.). Poems of Nature, selected and edited by H. S. Salt and 
F. B. Sanborn (H. & M.). Familiar Letters, edited by F. B. San- 
bom (H. & M., 1894). Bibliography, by S. A. Jones (New York, 1894), 
Life, by F. B. Sanborn, in American Men of Letters Series, 1882. Life, 
by H. S. Salt, in Great Writers Series (Scott, 1896 ; has bibliography by 
J. P. Anderson, Bwtish Museum) . Talks with Emerson, by C. J. Wood- 
bury (Baker & Taylor, 1890; in general, books about Emerson have 
numerous references to Thoreau). His Life and Aims, by H. A. Page 
(Osgood & Co., 1877). Thoreau, by J. R. Lowell, in Literary Essays, 
Vol. I. R. W. Emerson, Works, Vol. X. An American Rousseau, 
Saturday Review, 1864, Vol. XVIII. Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist 
(Boston, 1873). Thoreau and New England Transcendentalism, Catho- 
lic World, 1878, Vol. XXVII. Familiar Studies of Men and Books, by 
R. L. Stevenson (Chatto & Windus, 1882). Indoor Studies, by John 
Burroughs (H. & M., 1889). Liberty and a Living, by P. G. Hubert 
(New York, 1889). Nature in Books, by P. A. Graham (London, 1891). 

George Ticknor. — Life, Letters, and Journals, by G. S. Hillard 
(Ofigood & Co., 1876; 2 vols.). 

yones Very. — Poems and Essays, Complete Edition, with a Bio- 
graphical Sketch by J. F. Clarke (H. & M., 1886). Pcems, with an 
Introductory Memoir by W. P. Andrew (H. & M., 1883). 

Mercy Warren. — Life, by Alice Brown, in Women of Colonial and 
Revolutionary Times Series (Scribner, 1896) . 

George Washington. — Writings, edited by W. C. Ford (Putnam, 
1889-1893; 14 vols.). The True George Washington, by P. L. Ford 
(Lippincott, 1896). Life, by H. C. Lodge, in American Statesmen 
Series, 1889 (2 vols.). 

Daniel Webster. — Works, with Memoir by Edward Everett (Little & 
Brown, 1851 ; 6 vols.). The Great Speeches and Orations (Little, Brown 
& Co., 1879). Unpublished Manuscripts and Some Examples of his 
Preparation for Public Speaking, by G. F. Hoar, Scribner's Magazine, 
July, 1899. Life, by G. T. Curtis (Appleton, 1869-1870; 2 vols.). Life, 
by H. C. Lodge, in American Statesmen Series, 1884. Reminiscences 
and Anecdotes of, by Peter Harvey (Little, Brown & Co., 1877) . Orations 
and Speeches, Vols. III., IV., by Edward Everett. As a Master of Eng- 
lish Style, by E. P. Whipple, in American Literature and Other Papers 
(Ticknor & Co., 1887). As an Orator, and a Glance at, in John Adams, 
with Other Essays and Addresses, by Mellen Chamberlain (H. & M., 
1898). 

Noah Webster. — Life, by H. E. Scudder, in American Men of 
Letters Series, 1882. 

Walt Whitman. — Calamus ; Letters to Peter Doyle ; Complete Prv 'e 
Works; Leaves of Grass; Leaves of Grass, Popular Edition; Selev 
tions from the Prose and Poetry of; The Wound Dresser; Letters to 
his Mother (Small, Maynard & Co.). Autographia, selected from his 



3S6 APPENDIX. 

Prose Writings (Webster & Co., 1892). Letters from Washington dur- 
ing the War, Century Magazine, October, 1893. The Man, by Thomas 
Donaldson (F. P. Harper, 1896). Reminiscences of, by W. S. Ken- 
nedy (McKay, 1896). Familiar Studies of Men and Books, by R. L. 
Stevenson (Chatto & Windus, 1882). Studies in Literature [1789- 
1877], by Edward Dowden (Paul, Trench & Co., 1889). Democratic 
Art, with Special Reference to Walt Whitman, in Essays Speculative 
and Suggestive, Vol. H., by J. A. Symonds (Chapman & Hall, 1890). 
Walt Whitman, by William Clarke (Macmillan, 1892). A Study of, 
by R. M. Bucke, M.D. (McKay, 1883). Browning and Whitman, a 
Study in Democracy, by O. L. Triggs (Macmillan, 1893). A Study of, by 
J. A. Symonds (Nimmo, 1893). A Study of, by John Burroughs (H. & 
M., 1896). Studies in Prose and Poetry, by A. C. Swinburne (Chatto & 
Windus, 1897; second edition). Emerson and Other Essays, by J. J. 
Chapman (Scribner, 1898). The New Spirit, by Havelock Ellis (Scott, 
1890) . 

y, G. Whittier. — Wox'ks, Standard Library Edition (H. & M., 1892- 
1894; 9 vols.; Vols. VHL, IX., contain Life and Letters, by S. T. 
Pickard). Complete Poetical Works, Cambridge Edition (H. & 
M.). Life and Letters, by S. T. Pickard (H. & M., 1894; 2 vols.). 
Life, by W. J. Linton, in Great Writers Series (Scott, 1893 '» ^^.s bibli- 
ography by J. P. Anderson, British Museum). A Biography, by F. H. 
Underwood (Osgood, 1883). Notes of his Life and of his Friendships, 
by Mrs. J. T. Fields (Harper, 1893). G. E. Woodberry on, Atlantic 
Monthly, November, 1892. Personal Recollections of, by Mary B. 
Claflin (Crowell, 1893). E. S. Phelps on, Century Magazine, January, 
1893. Barrett Wendell, Stelligeri (Scribner, 1893). With the Children, 
by Margaret Sidney (Lothrop, 1893). Barbara Frietchie, a Study, by 
Caroline H. Dall (Roberts Bros., 1892). Oration by Thomas Chase, 
President of Haverford College, in Proceedings at the Presentation of 
a Portrait of Whittier to Friends' School, Providence (Riverside Press, 
1885). Life, Genius, and Writings, by W. S. Kennedy (Lothrop, 1886). 

Roger Williams. — Life, Letters, and Works (Providence: Publica- 
tions of the Narragansett Club, 1866-1874, 6 vols.). Life, by O. S. 
Straus (Century Co., 1894). 

N. P. Willis. — Voems (New York : Clark & Austin, 1861). Life, by 
H. A. Beers, in American Men of Letters Series, 1885 (has bibliography). 

yohn W^inthrop. — Life, by J. H. Twichell, in Makers of America, 
Series, 1891. Life and Letters, by R. C. Winthrop (Little, Brown & Co., 
1863 ; 2 vols.). 

R. C. Winthrop. — Addresses and Speeches (Little, Brown & Co., 
1852-1886; 4 vols.). Memoir, by R. C. Winthrop, Jr. (Little, Brown & 
Co., 1897). 

John Woolman, — Journal, with introduction by Whittier (Osgood, 

1873). 



INDEX. 



INDEX, 



Abraham Lincvln, 2^^, 

Adams, Abigail, 52. 
Adams, John, 46, 49, 52. 
Adams, Rev. John, 37, 335. 
Adams, Samuel, 47-48. 
Addison, Joseph, 15, 32, 52, 56, 

121, 124. 
Adjustment, 238. 
Adulateur, 67, 337. 
Adventure of One Hans Pfaal, 

164. 
Afloat and Ashore, 130. 
After a Tempest, 146. 
Age of Reason, 79. 
Ages, 143. 

Akenside, Mark, 80. 
Al Aaraaf 167. 
Alb an the Pirate, 149. 
Alcott, A. B., 205, 209-210. 
Alcuin, 95. 
Aldrich, T. B., 283. 
Algerine Captive, 93. 
Alkambra, 1 24-125. 
Allen, Ethan, 52, 338. 
Allen, J. L.,288. 
Allston, Washington, 82. 
Alnwick Castle, 114. 
Alsop, George, 39, 335. 
Alsop, Richard, 87. 
America, 173. 
Avierican Flag, 114. 
American literature — 

Americanism in, 12, 15, 54, 

59, 62, 80, 91, 92, 93, 100 

-loi, 123, 126, 135, 136, 

359 



171, 249, 254-255, 257, 
258, 264, 267-269, 274, 
281-282, 284-289, 290, 
346; and classic literature, 
12,24,41,71-72,138,145, 
147, 201, 260, 266, 340; 
and English life and litera- 
ture, 3, 7-9, 15,18,23,25, 
27, 28, 36, zi^ 40, 4i» 42, 
45.52,54, 55» 57' 58' 59, 
60, 61, 62, 64, 66, 67, 68, 
71-72, 78, 79, 80, 82, %2r 
86, 89-90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 
95,99, 100, 109, 113, 114, 
115, 116, 118, 119, 121, 
123, 124, 128, 138, 144, 
145, 146, 147, 149, 150, 

152, 153, 155. 156, i57» 
158, 159, 166, 168, 169, 
171, 172, 175, 176, 196, 
201, 226, 229, 230, 236, 
239, 244, 246, 248, 249, 
256, 260, 261, 263, 264, 
265, 266, 283, 286; and 
European (continental) 
life and literatures, 46, 56, 

71, 91, 92, 93, 109, 118, 
119, 124-125, 153, 157, 
169, 175, 176, 179, 182, 
183, 184, 186, 188, 190, 
193-195, 201, 226, 260, 
263, 265, 281, 282, 283; 
general condition affect- 
ing, 7-9, 43-45» 61, 71- 

72, 74-77. 103-111, 222, 



360 



INDEX. 



225, 267, 279-280, 282- 
283; Indians in, 12, 18, 
19, 20-21, 31, 35, 38, 39, 
40, 59, 65, 67, no, 113, 
114, 115, 116, 127, 132, 

133, 134, 143, 153, 155, 
156, 187-188, 234, 286, 
293»295» 307*317; Nature 
in, 59, 61-62, S;^y 84-86, 
89,109-110,111,113,115, 
116, 118, 126, 127, 133, 

134, 138, 143-147* 148* 
184, 207, 208, 212, 213, 
221, 223, 239, 244-245, 
273, 285, 287, 346; and 
Orientalism, 201, 264-265, 
266; Romanticism in, 59, 
64, 79-80, 82-86, 95-101, 

135, 195, 226, 281, 286, 

Americanism (see " American 

literature " ) . 
Ames, Fisher, 78. 
Among the Hills, 237. 
Anarchiad, 59, 339. 
Andre, 149. 

Andros, Thomas, 52, 338. 
Annabel Lee, 169. 
And- Slavery Poems, 170. 
Arbuthnot, John, 54. 
Archdale, John, 38, 335. 
Armies of the United States, 

59. 
Arnold, Matthew, 207, 209, 246. 
Artemus Ward : His Book, etc., 

274. 
Arthur Gordon Pyi?i^ 164, 165. 
Arthur Nervyjt, 94, 96-97, 100. 
Assignation, 165. 
Astoria, 125. 
Atalantis, 155. 



Atlantic Monthly, 107, 253. 
Augustus and Aurelian, 93. 
Aurelian, 172. 
Autobiography of Franklin, 56- 

57*350. 
Autobiography of Jefferson, 52. 
Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 

253, 256-258. 
Aylmere, 261. 

Backwoodsman, 113. 
Balloon Hoax, 164. 
Balzac, Honore, 134. 
Bancroft, George, 278. 
Barbara Frietchie, 235. 
Barefoot Boy, 236. 
Barlow, Joel, 59, 62-63, 3^9* 339- 
Barton, Andrew, 67, 337. 
Battle Hymn of the Republic, 174. 
Battle of Brooklyn, 68, -t^-^"^. 
Battle of Bunker's- Hill, 68, 321, 

Battle of Niagara, 88-90. 
Battle of Tippecanoe, 149. 
Battle-Pieces, 149. 
Bay Fight, 174. 
Bay Psalm Book, 25. 
Bedouin Song, 264. 
Beecher, H. W., 274, 345. 
Belknap, Jeremy, 92. 
Bells, 166. 
Ben Bolt, 261. 
Benjamin, Park, 1 16. 
Berenice^ 166. 
Bertram, 156. 
Beverley, Robert, 15, 329, 
Bianca Visconti, 115. 
Biglozv Papers, 245-246. 
Biographical Stories, 219. 
Bird, R. M., 260. 
Black Cat, 165. 



INDEX 



361 



Blair, Rev. James, 14. 
Blair, Robert, 144-145. 
Blake, William, 226. 
Bleecker, A. E., 92-93. 
Blithedale Rof/iance, 221, 223, 

224. 
Blockheads (opera), 68, 339. 
Blockheads (play), 68, 338. 
Boker, G. H., 261. 
Boston J 81. 

Boston News- Letter^ 304, 323. 
Bosworth, Benjamin, 29. 
Bracebridge Hall, 123-124. 
Brackenridge, H. H., 68, 93, 321, 

338. 
Bradford, William, 18, 295, 330. 
Bradstreet, Anne, 26-27, 299, 331. 
Brahma, 207. 
Brainard, J. G., 173. 
" Bread and Cheese Lunch," 128, 

142. 
Breechiad, 81. 
" Bret Harte," 286. 
Bridal of Pennacook, 234. 
Brief and Plain Essay, 37, 335. 
British Prison-Ship, 63, 340. 
Broken Harp, 84. 
Brook Farm Community, 205, 

217, 221, 343, 345. 
Brooke, Henry, 41. 
Brooks, M. G., 1 71-172. 
Broomstick Train, 255. 
Brother Jonathan, 171. 
Brown, C. B., 94-101, 121, 157, 

169, 170, 226. 
Browne, C. F., 274, 346. 
Brownell, H. H., 174. 
Browning, E. B., 169. 
Browning, Robert, 176. 
Brutus, 115. 
Bryant, W. C. — life, 136-142; 



works, 87, 137, 142-148; 
miscellaneous, 108, 163, 

184, 345- 
Buccaneer, 170. 

Buckthorne and His Friends, 1 24. 
Buds and Bird- Voices, 220. 
Building of the Ship, 184. 
Burke, Edmund, 79. 
Burnett, F. H., 288. 
Burns, 114. 
Burns, Robert, 229. 
Burroughs, John, 284. 
Busy- Body papers, 56. 
Butler, Samuel, 61, 82. 
Butler, W. A., 149. 
Byles, Mather, 32, ^1^ 308, 334. 
Byrd, Colonel William, 15, 294, 

329, 330- 
Byron, Lord, 79, %^, 89, 90, 114, 
115, 149, 152, 153, 155, 
168, 172, 286. 

Cable, G. W., 288. 

Calaynos, 261. 

Calhoun, J. C, 274-275. 

California Ballads, 264. 

Callender, John, 35, 335. 

Calvert, G. H., 153. 

Campbell, Thomas, 65, 80. 

Carey, Mathew, 87. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 194, 199, 200, 
201, 204. 

Cary, Alice and Phoebe, 149-150. 

Cassandra Southwick, 234. 

Cassique of Accabee, 156. 

Caterpillar, 85. 

Cathedral, 246. 

Cato — Moral Distichs, transla- 
tion of, 41, 336. 

Catter skill Falls, 147. 

Cecil Dreemcy 175. 



362 



INDEX. 



Celestial Railroad, 220, 
Cha mbered Na utilus, 25 5 . 
Changeling 246. 
Channing, W. E., 26, 274. 
Character of the Province of 

Maryland, 39, 335. 
" Charles E. Craddock," 288. 
Charlotte Te77iple, 93, 94. 
Chatham, Earl, 45, 46. 
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 42, 153, 244. 
Child, L. M., 172. 
Choate, Rufus, 276, 345. 
Chj'ist in Hades, 149. 
Christus, 190. 
Chronological History of New 

England, 36, 335. 
Church, Benjamin, 35, 335. 
Church, Thomas, 35, 334. 
Churchill, Charles, 61, 64, 66. 
Churchill, Winston, 289. 
Cicero — De Senectute, transla- 
tion of, 41. 
City in the Sea, 168. 
Clara Howard, 94, 96, 97, 99. 
Clari, 114. 
Classic literature (see " American 

literature "). 
Clay, Henry, 275. 
Clemens, S. L., 286-287, 346. 
Cleopatra, 176. 
Clever Stories of Many Nations, 

149. 
Cliff ton, WilHam, 81. 
Clio, 172. 

Clough, A. H., 246. 
Colden, Cadwallader, 39, 335. 
Coleridge, S. T., %i„ 149, 168, 

194, 201, 226, 244. 
Collection of Poems by Several 

Hands, ^T, 307, 335. 
Colleges, 325. 



Collins, William, 58, 60. 
Colman, Benjamin, 32, 37, 334. 
Colunibiad, 62-63, 319, 339. 
Columbian Magazine, 311. 
Columbus, 244. 
Com?non Sense, 50, 338. 
Concord Hymn, 208. 
Conqueror Worm, 168. 
Conquest of Canaan, 61, 318, 

339- 

Conquest of Louisburg, 37, 335. 

Conquest of Mexico, 277. 

Conquest of Peru, 277, 

Conrad, R. T., 261. 

Contemplations, 26, 299. 

Contrast, 90. 

Cook, Ebenezer, 39, 335. 

Cooke, J. E., 157-158. 

Cooke, P. P., 153. 

Cooper, J. F. — life, 126-130; 
works, loi, 126-127, 130- 
136; miscellaneous, 156* 

i57» 345- 
Coquette, 94. 
Correspondent, 60. 
Cotton, John, 19, 22, 25, 29, 302, 

332. 
Country Lovers, 81. 
Court of Fancy, 41, 309, 336. 
Courtin\ 81, 245. 
Courtship of Miles Standish, 

186-187. 
Cowper, William, 84, 144, 145. 
Crabbe, George, 84. 
Crafts, WiUiam, 152. 
Crevecoeur, J. H. St. John, 54* 

55. 3i5» 339. 
Crisis, 50. 

Croaker poems, 1 1 3-1 14. 
Crowded Street, 143. 
CulpHt Fay, 113. 



INDEX. • 



363 



Cure for the Spleen, 54, 313, 338. 
Curtis, G. W., 277, 346. 

Dana, R. H., 26, 170, 345. 

Dana, R. H., Jr., 174. 

Dante, Alighierj, 176, 190, 266. 

Day of Doom, 27-28, 300, 331. 

Days, 207, 208, 

Dead House, 246. 

Death of Cleopatra, 156. 

Death of General Montgomery, 
68, 338. 

Death of the Flowers, 146. 

Declaration of htdependence, 45. 

Deer slayer, 134. 

Demetria, 171. 

Democracy, 249. 

Democratiad, %(>, 87. 

Denton, Daniel, 39, 335. 

De Quincey, Thomas, 169. 

Descent into the Maelstrom, 164. 

Deukalion, 264. 

Dial, 210. 

Diary of Samuel Sewall, 34-35, 
303,332. 

Dickens, Charles, 122. 

Dickenson, Jonathan, 40-41, 336. 

Dickinson, Emily, 285. 

Dickinson, John, 48, 337. 

Disappointment, 67, 337. 

Disinterred Warrior, 143. 

Divina Commedia — Parson's 
translation, 1 76 ; Long- 
fellow's, 190 ; miscella- 
neous, 266. 

Divine Tragedy, 189. 

Doctor Griinshaw's Secret, 221, 
223, 224, 225. 

Doctor Heidegger'' s Experiment, 
220. 

Dolliver Romance, 221, 223, 225. 



Dolph Heyliger, 124. 
Do7nain of Arnheim, 166. 
Donna Florida, 155. 
Dorothy Q., 255. 
Douglass, William, 35, 335. 
Drake, J. R., 113-114, 345. 
Dream Life, 174. 
Drea77i of the Branding of Asses 

and Horses, 53-54, 312. 
Dreamland, 167. 
Dryden, John, 37, 66, 67. 
Dunbar, P. L., 288. 
Dunlap, William, 91. 
Dutchman's Fireside, 113. 
Dwight, Timothy, 59, 61-62, 87, 

318, 339. 

Each and All, 207. 

Edgar Hunily, 94, 97-98, 99, 

100, lOI. 
Edict by the King of Prussia, 56. 
Edinburgh Review, 1 1 7-1 1 8. 
Edwards, Jonathan, 33-34, 191- 

192, 302, 335, 349. 
Eggleston, Edward, 285. 
Eiron and Charmion, 166. 
Eleanor a, 165. 
Elegy on the Times, 60, 338. 
Eliot, John, 21, 332. 
Elsie Venner, 258-259. 
Embargo, 138. 
Emerson, R. W. — life, 195-200 ; 

works, 62, 195, 200-209 ; 

miscellaneous, 211, 269, 

345- 

English literature (see "Ameri- 
can literature"). 

English, T. D., 261. 

English Traits, 203. 

Entertaining Passages Relating 
to Philip's War, 35. 



3^4 



INDEX. 



Ephe77tera, 56. 

Eternal Goodness, 238. 

Eureka, 163, 164. 

European literatures (see "Ameri- 
can literature "). 

Eutaw Springs, 65. 

Evangeline, 185-186. 

Evans, Nathaniel, 42, 336. 

Everett, Edward, 276, 345. 

Examination of Doctor Benja- 
min Eranklin, 56, 337. 

Excelsior, 183. 

Exiles, 234. 

Fable for Critics, 245. 

Facts in the Case of M. Valde- 
mar, 164. 

Fall of British Tyranny, 67, 338. 

Fall of the House of Usher, 165, 
166. 

Familiar Epistle to a Friend, 
246. 

Fanny, 114. 

Fans haw e, 220. 

Farmer Refuted, 49, 337. 

Father of an Ottly Child, 91. 

Faust — Bayard Taylor's trans- 
lation of, 265. 

Feather top, 220. 

Federalist, 50-51, 341. 

Female Quixotis?n, 94. 

Ferdinand and Isabella, 277. 

Fessenden, T. G., 81-82. 

Field, Eugene, 285. 

Field of Orleans, ?>^, 

Fielding, Henry, 123. 

Flood of Years, 143. 

Florence Vane, 153. 

Folger, Peter, 36, 332. 

Forbearance, 208. 

Forest Hymn, 145, 146. 



Foresters (poem), 84-85. 
Foresters (tale), 92. 
Foster, H. W., 94. 
Four Ages of Man, 26. 
Foure Elements, 26. 
Foure Humours, 26. 
Foure Monarchies, 26, 27. 
Foure Seasons, 26, 299. 
Franklin, Benjamin, 42, 55-57, 

336, 337- 
Freedom of the Will^ 3 3> 192, 335. 
Freneau, Philip, 59, 63-65, 320, 

323* 340. 
Froissart Ballads, 153. 
Frontenac, 116. 
Full Vindication of the Measures 

of the Congress, 49, 337. 
Fuller, Margaret (see "Ossoli"). 

Gallic Perfidy, 37-38, 335. 

Gay, John, 58, 60. 

General Idea of the College of 

Mirania, 41, 335. 
Gladiator, 261. 

Godfrey, Thomas, 41-42, 309, 336. 
God^s Protecting Providence, 41, 

336. 
Godwin, WilUam, 95, 99, 156. 
Goethe, J. W., 182, 186, 194, 263, 

265. 
Gold Bug, 164. 
Golden Legend, 189-190. 
Goldsmith, Oliver, 59, 60, 62, 83, 

124. 
Good-Bye, 208. 
" Good Gray Poet," 267. 
Good Spec, 91. 
Gookin, Daniel, 21, 332. 
Gordon, William, 51, 341. 
Grandfather's Chair, 219. 
Grave, John, 13, 329. 



INDEX. 



365 



Gray Forest-Eagle, 116. 
Gray, Thomas, 58, 60, 64, 86. 
Green, Joseph, 37, 308, 335. 
Gree7t River, 146. 
Greene, A. G., 173. 
Greenfield HiU, 62, 339. 
Greyslaer, 115. 
Group (play), 67, 337. 
Group (poem), 81. 
Guardian Angel, 258. 
Guillotina, 86. 

" H. H.," 285-286. 

Hail Colu?nbia, 88. 

Hale, E. E., 284. 

Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 114, 345. 

Hamilton, Alexander, 49, 50, 337, 

341. 

Hammond, John, 12, 329. 

Ha7is Breitman's Ballads, 262. 

Happiness of America, 59. 

Harte, F. B., 286, 346. 

Hasty-Pudding, 63, 319, 339. 

Haunted Palace, 168. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, — life, 
178, 214-219; works, 214, 
219-227; miscellaneous, 
100, 141, 142, 345, 346. 

Hay, John, 285. 

Hayne, P. H., 153. 

Heidenmauer, 130. 

Hemans, Felicia, 171. 

Henry, Patrick, 46. 

Hermit of Saba, 64. 

Herrick, Robert, 64. 

Hesperia^ 152. 

Hiawatha^ 1 87-189. 

Hillhouse, J. A., 171. 

History of Carolina^ 38, 336. 

History of the Dividing Line ^ 1 5, 
294, 329/330- 



History of FJvira^ 93. 
History of the first Discovery and 
Settlement of Virg in ia, 1 6, 

36, 330- 

History of the Five Ittdian Na- 
tions, 39, 335. 

History of Maria Kittle^ 92. 

History of New England, 19, 330. 

History of Plymouth, 18, 295, 

330- 

History of the Province of Massa- 
chusetts Bay, 51, 341. 

History of the Province of New 
York, 40, 335. 

History of the United Nether- 
lands, 278. 

History of the United States, by 
Bancroft, 277-278. 

History of Virginia, 15, 329. 

Hoboi7iok, 172. 

Hoffman, C. F., 115. 

Holland, J. G., 176. 

Holmes, O. W. — life, 250-254; 
works, 251, 254-260; mis- 
cellaneous, 345, 346. 

Home, Sweet Ho??ie, 114. 

Homer, 147. 

Ho?ne ward Bound, 130. 

Hood, Thomas, 149. 

Hooker, Thomas, 21, 22, 297, 331. 

Hope Leslie, 172. 

Hopkins, Lemuel, 59, 87, 339. 

Hopkinson, Francis, 53, 54, 337. 

Hopkinson, Joseph, 88. 

Horse- Shoe Robinson, 154. 

House by the Sea, 261. 

House of Night, 64, 320. 

House of the Seven Gables, 221, 
223, 224, 225, 227. 

How the Women Went from 
Dover, 236. 



366 



INDEX. 



Howard, Martin, 47. 

Howe, J. W., 174. 

Howells, W. D., 283-284, 346. 

Hoyt, Ralph, 116. 

Hubbard, William, 35, 333. 

Hubert and Ellen ^ Z^i' 

Humphreys, David, 159, 339- 

340. 
Hunt, Leigh, 89. 
Hurricane y 145. 
Hutchinson, Thomas, 51, 341. 
Hutton, Joseph, 84, 88. 
Hylas, 264. 

Hymns to the Gods, 1 73. 
Hyperion, 179, 182. 

Ichabod, 235. 

Idomeny 171. 

"Ik Marvel," 174. 

Iliad — Bryant's Translation of, 
147-148. 

In School Days, 236. 

In War Time, 235. 

Indian Burying Ground, 65. 

Indian Girls Lament, 143. 

Indian Summer Reverie, 244, 

Indian^ s Bride, 153. 

Indians (see " American litera- 
ture''). 

Industry of the United States, 59. 

Inscription for the Entrance to a 
Wood, 139, 145, 146. 

Irene, 244. 

Irving, Washington, — life, 116- 
121 ; works, 117, 121-126; 
miscellaneous, 174, 182, 
190, 249, 345, 346. 

Island in the South, 153, 

Island of the Fay, 166. 

Israfel, 167, 168. 

Italian Banditti, 124. 



Jackson, H. H., 285, 346. 

James, Henry, 284, 346. 

Jane Talbot, 94, 96, 99, 100, 

Jay, John, 50. 

Jefferson, Thomas, 45-46, 52. 

" Joaquin Miller," 286. 

John Brent, 175. 

Johnson, Edward, 20, 331. 

Johnston, R. M., 288. 

Jonathan Oldstyle letters, 121. 

Jones, Professor Hugh, 15, 329. 

Josh Billings : His Book, 273. 

Journey from Philadelphia to 
New York, 64, 340. 

Journal of Bradford and Wins- 
low, 18, 295, 330. 

Journal of John Winthrop, 330. 

Journal of John Woolman, 52- 

53- 
Journal of Sarah K. Knight, 35, 

305* 334. 
Judas Maccabceus, 189. 
Judd, Sylvester, 173-174. 
Judith, Esther, etc., 171-172. 
June, 146. 
Justice and Expediency, 238. 

Kant, Immanuel, 193-194. 
Katharine Walton, 157. 
Kavanagh, 182. 
Keats, John, 89, 149, 150, 168, 

244,283. ■ 
Keep Cool, 171. 
Keimer, Samuel, 41. 
Kennedy, J. P., 154. 
Key, F. S., %Z, 
King Philip's War, 35. 
Kinsmen, 157. 
Knapp, Francis, 37. 
Knickerbocker'^ s History of Nevi 

York, 118, 122-123. 



INDEX. 



367 



Knight, H. C, 84. 
Knight, S. K., 35, 305, 334. 

Ladd, J. B., 59, 340. 

Ladies of Castile, 67. 

Lady Eleanor's Mantle, 220 

Lamb, Charles, 53. 

Landor, W. S., 156, 244. 

Landor's Cottage, 166. 

Lanier, Sidney, 287. 

Larcom Lucy, 285. 

Lars, 264. 

Last Leaf, 255. 

Last of the Mohicans, 133, 134. 

Laurens, Henry, 52, 310, 338. 

Lawson, John, 38, 336. 

Lay of the Scotch Fiddle, 113. 

Lays of the LLeart, 171. 

Lazarus, Emma, 285. 

Leah and Rachel, 13, 329. 

Legare, J. M., 153. 

Legend of Brittany, 244. 

Legend of Sleepy Hollow, 123. 

Legends and Lyrics, 154. 

Leggett, William, 116. 

Leicester, 91. 

Leisure Day Rhymes, 1 49. 

Leisure Hours, 84. 

Leland, C. G., 261-262. 

Leonard, Daniel, 49, 338. 

Letter from a Gentle7nan at 
Halifax, 47. 

Letters from an Afnerican 
Farmer, 54-55, 315, 339. 

Letters from a Farmer in Penn- 
sylvania, 48, 337. 

Letters of the British Spy, 79. 

Letters, of John and Margaret 
Winthrop, 19, 296, 330. 

Letters to Young Ladies, 171. 

Lewis, M. G., 84. 



Life and Character of Patrick 
Henry, 79. 

Life and Sayings of Mrs, Part- 
ington, 273. 

Life of Columbus, 125. 

Life of Franklin Pierce, 219, 

Life of Goldsmith, 125. 

Life of Washington, 79. 

Life on the Ocean Wave, 173. 

Ligeia, 165, 166. 

Lighthouse, 184. 

Lincoln, Abraham, 276-277. 

Lines on Revisiting the Country ^ 
146. 

Linn, J. B., 83, 93. 

Linwoods, 172. 

Little Britain, 123. 

Little People of the Snow, 147. 

Livingston, William, 40, 336. 

Locke, D. R., 274. 

Logan, James, 41, 336. 

Longfellow, H. W. — life, 177- 
182; works, 177-178, 182- 
191; miscellaneous, 163, 
246, 345, 346. 

Longfellow, Samuel, 173. 

Lord, W. W., 149. 

Lost Occasion, 235. 

LovewelVs Fight, 37. 

Lowell, J. R. — life, 239-244; 
works, 240, 244-250; mis- 
cellaneous, 163, 346. 

Lunt, George, 1 73. 

Mackenzie, Henry, 79. 
Macpherson, James, 59, 266, 271. 
Madison, James, 50. 
Magazines, 53, 58, 77, 107, 116, 

311,324,344. 
Magnalia, 30-31, 301, ^t^t,. 
Main Truck, 115. 



368 



INDEX. 



Marble Faun ^ 221, 222, 223, 224, 

225, 226, 227. 
Marco Bozzaris, 114. 
Margaret, 174. 

Margaret SjjiitK' s Journal, 238. 
"Maria del Occidente," 171- 

172. 
« Mark Twain," 286-287. 
Markoe, Peter, 58, 68, 340. 
Married or Single, 172. 
Marshall, John, 79. 
Mason, John, 21, 332. 
Masque of the Gods^ 264. 
Masque of Pandora, 189. 
Masque of the Red Death, 165. 
Masquerade, 149. 
" Massachusettensis," 49, 338. 
Massachusetts to Virginia, 235. 
Mather, Cotton, 29-32, 36, 301, 

Mather, Increase, 29, 31, 333. 

Mather, Richard, 29. 

Mather, Samuel, 30, 334. 

Maud Muller, 236. 

May Day, 91. 

Maylem, John, 37-38, 335. 

Meat out of the Eater, 27, 331. 

Meddler, 60. 

Meditations in America, 149. 

Meditations of Anne Bradstreet, 

27. 
Meeting, 238. 

Melville, Herman, 148-149. 
Mercedes, 132. 
Merlin, 207. 

Mesmeric Revelation, 164. 
" Metaphysical " poets, 25, 27, 

36, 37- 
M'Fingac, 60, 318, 338. 
Michael Angelo, 189. 
Middle States — conditions in, 



affecting literature, 76, 77, 

112-113. 
Midnight Mass for the Dying 

Year, 183. 
Miller, C. H., 286. 
Milton, John, 23, 28, 64, 149, 155. 
Minister'' s Black Veil, 220. 
Mitchell, D. G., 174, 346. 
Mitchell, S. W., 284. 
Moby Dick, 149. 
Modern Chivalry, 93. 
Mogg Megone, 234. 
Money-Diggers, 124. 
Money-King, 149. 
Monikins, 130. 
Monos and Una, 166. 
Monument Mountain, 143. 
Moore, Thomas, 89, 115, 153, 

i55» 172. 
Moral Pieces, 171. 
Morella, 166. 
Morrell, WilHam, 24, 330. 
Morris, G. P., 115. 
Mortal Antipathy, 258. 
Morton, Nathaniel, 24. 
Morton, Sarah, Zt^- 
Morton, Thomas, 19, 330. 
Mosses from an Old Manse, 219- 

220. 
Motley Assembly, 68, 338. 
Motley, J. L., 278, 345. 
Moulton, L. C., 285. 
Mountain of the Lovers, 154. 
Mourfs Relation, 330. 
Mrs. Bullfrog, 220. 
MS. Found in a Bottle, 160. 
Murders in the Rue Morgue, 164. 
Murfree, M. N., 288. 
My Garden Acquaintance, 249. 
My Life is Like the Suj?tmer 

Rose, 152. 



INDEX. 



369 



My Mother's Bible, 115. 
Mystery of Marie Roget^ 1 64. 
Mystic Trumpeter, 273. 

Narrative of the Captivity of Mrs. 

•Rowlandson, 35, 307,333. 

Narrative of the Indian Wars, 

Narrative of the Troubles with 
the Indians, 35, 333. 

Nasby Papers, 274. 

Nature (see "American litera- 
ture"). 

Nature, 207. 

Neal, John, 88-90, 171. 

New Description of Carolina, 38, 

335- 

New England — conditions in, 
affecting literature, 16-18, 
21-23, 28-29, 76, 77, 91, 
I77» 183, I9I-I95* 254- 
255, 259, 260. 

New England^s Memorial, 24, 

25, 332. 
New England Primer, 326-328. 
New England Tale, 172. 
New England Tragedies, 189. 
New English Canaan, 19, 330. 
New Pastoral, 261. 
New Voyage to Georgia, 39, 336. 
Newspapers, 53, 77, 107, 312, 

323, 344. 
Nick of the Woods, 261. 
Niles, Samuel, 37, 335. 
Norman Maurice, 156. 
North American Review, 107, 

139, 249. 
Norton, John, 36. 
Not Yet, 139. 
Note- Books (Hawthorne's), 219, 

223. 

2B 



Nothing to Wear, 149. 
Nova Anglia, 24, 330. 
Noyes, Nicholas, 37. 

Oakes, Urian, 36, 332. 

Ode Recited at the Harvard Coin* 

memoration, 246. 
Ode to France, 244. 
Ode to Happiness, 246. 
Odell, Jonathan, 66, 338. 
Odyssey, Bryant's translation, 

147-148. 
Of Plimoth Plantation, 330. 
Oh Fairest af the Rural Maids, 

146. 
Old Clock on the Stairs, 183. 
Old Grimes, 173. 
Old Ironsides, 252. 
Old Oaken Bucket, 115. 
Olio, 87. 
On a Beautiful Lady with a Loud 

Voice, 58. 
On a Bust of Dante, 1 76. 
On a Certaijt Condescension in 

Foreigners, 249. 
On a Honey Bee, 64. 
One-Hoss Shay, 255. 
O'Reilly, J. B., 285. 
Orientalism (see " American liter- 
ature " ). 
Ormond, 94, 96, 99, 1 00. 
Orta-Undis, 153. 
Osgood, F. S., 173. 
"Ossian," 59, 266, 271. 
Ossoli, Sarah Margaret Fuller, 

210. 
Otis, James, 46, 47, 336. 
Oudbi, 83. 
Our Old Home, 219. 
Outre-Mer, 182. 
Over the Tea- Cups, 258. 



370 



INDEX. 



Ovid — Metamorphoses^ Sandy's 
translation of, 12, 329. 

Page, T. N., 288. 

Paine, R. T., 80. 

Paine, Thomas, 50, 79, 2^^^* 

Pains of Memory, 80. 

Painted Cup, 147. 

Pan in Love, 176. 

Parker, Theodore, 274. 

Parkman, Francis, 278. 

Parsons, T. W., 176. 

Parting Glass, 64. 

Partisan, 157. 

Passage to India, 272. 

Pathfinder, 134, 135, 136. 

Patriot Chief, 68, 340. 

Patrolling Barnegat, 273. 

Paul Felton, 170. 

Paulding, J. K., 113, 121, 345. 

Paulding, William, 121. 

Payne, J. H., 114-115. 

Penhallow, Samuel, 35, 334. 

Penn, William, 40, 336. 

Pennsylvania Idyls, 264. 

Pennsylvania Pilgrim, 237. 

Percival, J. G., 172-173. 

Peters, PhiUis Wheatley, 58, 337. 

Phillips, Wendell, 27, 277, 345. 

Philo, 174. 

Philosophic Solitude, 40, 336. 

Philosophy of Composition, 166. 

Piatt, John, 285. 

Piazza Tales, 149. 

Pictures fro7n Appledore, 245. 

Pictures of Columbus, 64. 

Pierpont, John, 170. 

Pietas et Gratulatio, 2^^, 335. 

Pike, Albert, 173. 

Pilot, 130, 135. 

Pinckney, Eliza, 38-39, 336. 



Pinkney, E. C, 153. 

Pioneers, 134. 

Pipes at Lucknow, 236. 

Pit a7td the Pendulum, 164. 

Plato, 201. 

Poe, E. A. — Hfe, 158-163; 

works, 100, 158, 163-170; 

miscellaneous, 180, 226, 

227, 345» 346. 
Poe7n Spoken at Commencem.ent 

at Yale College, 62, 339. 
Poems of the Orient, 264. 
Poe?ns on Slavery, 184. 
Poet at the Breakfast Table, 258. 
Poetic Principle, 163. 
Political Balance, 64. 
Political Green-House, 87. 
Ponteach, 66-67, ZZ^- 
Poor Margaret Dwy, 84, 
Poor Richard^ s Almanac, 56-57, 

336. 
Pope, Alexander, 37, 57, 58, 59, 

61, 64, 66, 80, "^i, 86, 256. 
Porcupiniad, 87. 
Power of Fancy, 64. 
Power of Solitude, 80. 
Prairie (novel), 1 34-135. 
Prairie (poem), 146. 
Praxiteles and Phryne, 176. 
Prayer of Columbus, 272. 
Precaution, 128. 
Prescott, W. H., 277. 
Present State of Virginia, 15, 329. 
Present State of Virginia and 

the College, 15. 
Pretty Story, 54, 337. 
Prince, Thomas, 36, 335. 
Prince of Parthia, 42, 309, 336. 
Procession of Life, 220. 
Professor at the Breakfast Table^ 

258. 



INDEX. 



3/1 



Progress, 149. 

Progress of Dulness, 60, 317, -^t^Z. 

Prometheus (by Percival), 172. 

Prometheus (by Lowell), 244. 

Prophet, 264. 

Prospect of Peace, 62, 339. 

Proud Miss Macbride, 149. 

Providence Gazette, 312. 

/'j^/w of Life, 183. 

Psalms, Hy7nns, and Spiritual 

Songs, 25, 331. 
Purloined Letter, 164. 

Rain-Dream, 146. 
Rain in Sum??ier, 184. 
Rainy Day, 183. 
Raleigh, Walter, 27. 
Ralph, James, 41. 
Ramsay, David, 51, 341. 
Randolph, John, 78-79. 
Randolph of Roanoke, 235. 
Rationale of Verse, 163. 
Ravejt, 166, 169. 
Read, T. B., 261. 
Rebels, 172. 
Red Jacket, 1 14. 
Red Rover, 130, 135. 
RedeeTued Captive, 35, 334. 
Redskins, 130. 
Redwood, 172. 
Repplier, Agnes, 284. 
Restoration Drama, 42, 67. 
Reuben and Rachel, 94. 
Reveries of a Bachelor, 174. 
Rhoecus, 244. 
Richard Edney, 174. 
Richardson, Samuel, 94. 
Rights of the British Colonies As- 
serted and Proved, 47, 336. 
Rights of Man, 79. 
Riley, J. W., 285. 



Rill from the Town Pump, 220. 
7?^^ F«w Winkle, n8, 123. 
^/j^ ^ //^^ Dutch Republic, 278. 
Robert of Lincoln, 146. 
Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep^ 

Rodolph, 153. 
Rogers, John, 36. 
Rogers, Robert, 67, 336. 
Rogers, Samuel, 80. 
Rosaline, 244. 
Rose, Aquila, 41, 
Rowlandson, Mary, 35, 307, 333. 
Rowson, S. H., 81, 93-94. 
Rules for Reducing a Great Em- 
pire to a Small One, 56. 
Ruling Passion, 80. 
Rumford, Count, 79. 
Rural Funerals, 1 23. 
Rush, Benjamin, 79. 

Sabbath-Day Chase, 64. 

Sack of Rome, 67. 

Salmagundi, 118, 121-122; sec- 
ond series, 113. 

Sands, R. C, 116. 

Sandys, George, 12, 329. 

Sarah, 94. 

Sargent, Epes, 173. 

Sargent, L. M., %t,, 

Satanstoe, 132. 

" Saturday Club," 253. 

Saxe, J. G., 149. 

Scarlet Letter, 220, 221, 222, 223, 
224, 225, 227. 

Scott, Walter, 65, 79, '^i, 90, 113, 
116, 122; and Cooper, 
128, 130, 133, 136, 149, 
I53» 156, 172, 230, 239, 
261, 265. 

Seabury, Samuel, 48-49, 337. 



372 



INDEX. 



Seccomb, John, 37, 334. 

Secret of the Sea^ 184. 

Sedgwick, C. M., 172. 

Sella, 147. 

Septimius Felton, 221, 223. 

Seventy- Six, 171. 

Sewall, J. M., 88. 

Sewall, Samuel, 34-35, 303, 332. 

Shaded Water, 156. 

Shakspere, William, 12, 27, 42, 

64, 67, 155, 230, 266. 
Shaw, H. W., 273. 
Shelley, P. B., 89, 155, 168, 169, 

172, 226, 244, 264. 
Shepard, Thomas, 22, 331, 332. 
Sheridan's Ride, 261. 
Shillaber, B. P., 273. 
Shippen, Joseph, 41. 
Signs of Apostacy Lamented, 29. 
Sigourney, L. H., 171. 
Sill, E. R., 285. 
Simms, W. G., 154-157. 
Simple Cobler of Aggawam, 24, 

298, 331- 
Sinners in the Hands of an 

Angry God, 33, 303, 335. 
Sirens, 244. 

Skeleton in Armour, 183. 
Sketch Book, 122, 123. 
" Sketch Club,'' 142. 
Skipper Ireson^s Ride, 236. 
Sky Walk, 94. 
Slave Ships, 235. 
Slaves of Martinique, 235, 
Smith, Capt. John, 12, 293, 329, 

330, 354. 
Smith, F. H., 288. 
Smith, S. F., 173. 
Smith, Sydney, 117, 275. 
Smith, WilHam, 40, 335. 
Smith, William, 41, 335. 



Smollett, Tobias, 93, 124. 
Snow-Bound, 230, 232, 236-237* 
Snow Image, 220, 226. 
Snow-Shoiver, 146. 
Song of a Virginia Slave Mother f 

235- 

Song of Marion^ s Men, 142. 

SongofSion, 13, 329. 

Songs and Ballads, 156. 

Songs and Ballads of the Ameri- 
can Revolution, 316, 339. 

Songs of Labor, 235. 

Songs of the Sea, 173. 

Sot- Weed Factor, 39, 335. 

South — conditions in, affecting 
literature, 76, 150-152, 
287. 

Southey, Robert, 144, 145, 172. 

Spanish Studeiit, 1 89. 

Spenser, Edmund, 26, 27, 62. 

Spirit of Poetry, 184. 

Sprague, Charles, 170. 

Spy, 128, 132. 

Star- Spangled Banner, %%. 

Stars of the Summer Night, 1 89. 

Stedman, E. C, 283. 

Sterne, Lawrence, 79, 123. 

Stirling, Lord, 28. 

Stith, Rev. WilHam, 16, 36, 330. 

Stockton, F. R., 284, 

Stoddard, R. H., 285. 

Story, Joseph, 80. 

Story, W. W., 175-176. 

Story of Henry and Anne, 93. 

Stout Gentleman, 124. 

Stowe, H. B., i74-i75» 345» 34^. 

Strachey, William, 12, 329. 

Strange Lady, 147. 

Strange Stories by a Nervom 
Gentleman, 124. 

StT atford'On-Avon, 123. 



INDEX. 



373 



Street, A. B., Ii6. 
Student of Salamanca, 124. 
Summer in the Souths 156, 
Summer Ramble, 146. 
Summer Wind, 146. 
Summer^ s Day, 85-86. 
Sumner, Charles, 277-245. 
Sunday at Home, 220. 
Swift, Dean, 93. 
Sword of Bunker Hill, 149. 
Sylphs of the Seasons, 82, 85. 

Tailfer, Patrick, 39, 336. 

Tales of a Traveller, 124. 

Tales of a Wayside Inn, 189. 

Tanglewood Tales, 219. 

Taylor, Bayard, — life, 262-263 ; 
works, 262, 264-265 ; mis- 
cellaneous, 345. 

Telling the Bees, 236. 

Tell- Tale Heart, 165. 

Temptation of Venus, 153. 

Tenney, T. G., 94. 

Tennyson, Lord, 63, 147, 149, 
150, 153, 175, 244, 246. 

Tenth Muse, 26. 

Tent on the Beach, 232, 237. 

Terminus, 208. 

Terrible Tr adoration, 82. 

Thackeray, W. M., 158, 289, 

Thanatopsis, 138, 139, 144. 

Thaxter, C. L., 285. 

"Theresa," 81. 

Thessalonica, 95, 100. 

Thomas, Edith, 285. 

Thomas, Gabriel, 40, 336. 

Thompson, J. R., 153. 

Thompson, Maurice, 285. 

Thomson, Benjamin, 37. 

Thomson, James, 62. 

Thoreau, H. D., 210-213, 345, 346. 



Timrod, H. B., 153. 
To a Cloud, 147. 
To a Waierfoivl, 138, 146. 
To Faneuil Hall, 235. 
To Perdita Singing, 244. 
To the Dandelion, 244. 
To the Fringed Gentian, 65, 146. 
To the Man-of War Bird, 273. 
Tom Thornton, 170. 
Tortesa the Usurer, 115. 
Transcendentalism, 177, 191-195, 

204-205, 343. 
Trials of the Human Hearty 93. 
Trinitas, 238. 
True and Historical Narration 

of Georgia, 39. 
Trumbull, John, 59, 60-61, 317, 

338. 
Tuckerman, H. T,, 116, 
Turrell, Jane, 37, 335. 
Twice- Told Tales, 219-220. 
Two Years before the Mast, 174. 
Tyler, Royall, 90-91, 93. 

Ulalume, 167, 168, 169. 
Uncle Tom^s Cabin, 174. 
Under the Old Elm, 246. 
Under the Willows, 245, 
Unitarianism, 177, 343, 

Valerian, %2i' 

Vanderlyn, 115. 

Vaudois Teacher, 237. 
Very, Jones, 210. 

Victoria, 93. 

Village Blacksmith, 183. 

Village Merchant, 64, 340. 
Virginia — conditions in, affecting 
literature, 8, 11, 13-15. 

Virginia Comedians, 158. 
Vision of Colu?nbus, 62 339. 



374 



INDEX. 



Vision of Sir Launfal, 244. 
Voices of Freedom, 234-235. 

Wagoner of the Alleghanies, 261. 
Waiting by the Gate, 143. 
Wallace, Lewis, 285. 
Wallace, W. R., 149. 
War Lyrics, 174. 
Ward, E. P., 284. 
Ward, Nathaniel, 24, 298, 331. 
Ware, William, 172. 
Warner, C. D., 284. 
Warren, Mercy, 51, 67, 337, 341, 

343. 
Warton, Joseph, 86. 
Washington, George, 52. 
Webb, George, 41, 336. 
Webster, Daniel, 229, 235, 275- 

276. 
Webster, Noah, 79. 
West — condition in, affecting 

literature, 76-77, 346. 
" Westchester Farmer,'' 48-49* 
Westminster Abbey, 123. 
Wheatley, Phillis, 58. 
Whipple, E. P., 175. 
Whisper to a Bride, 171. 
Whistle, 56. 
White, H. K., 144. 
Whitman, S. H., 173. 
Whitman, Walt, — life, 265-267; 

works, 265, 267-273. 
Whittier, J. G., — life, 228-234; 

works, 228, 232, 234-239; 

miscellaneous, 345. 
Whole Booke of Psalmes, 25, 330. 
Wieland, 94, 98, 99. 
Wiggles worth, Michael, 27-28, 

300, Zl>^' 

Wild Honeysuckle, 64, 65, 321. 
Wilde, R. H., 152. 



Wilkins, M. E., 284. 
Willard, E H., 173. 
William Wilson, 165. 
Williams, John, 35, 334. 
Williams, Roger, 23-24, 29, 331- 

332. 
Willis, N. P., 1 1 5-1 16, 345. 
Wilson, Alexander, 84. 
Wind and Stream, 147. 
Wing-and-Wing, 130. 
Winslow, Edward, 18, 295, 330. 
Winthrop, John, 19, 330. 
Winthrop, Maj garet, 19, 296, 

ZIP^ 343- 
Winthrop, Theodore, 175. 
Wirt, William, 79. 
Wise, John, 32, 334. 
Witches Daughter, 236. 
Witchcraft, 31-32, no, 189, 222, 

255» 303. ZZZ^ 343. 
With Husky -Haughty Lips, O 

Sea, 273. 
Wolcott, Roger, 37, 334. 
Wonder- Book, 219. 
Wonder- Working Providence of 

Sion's Saviour, 20, 24, 

Woodman, Spare That Tree, 

115. 
Woodworth, Samuel, 115. 
Woolman, John, 52-53, 2)Z^' 
Wordsworth, WiUiam, 79, 83, 84, 

86, I45-I47» 201, 244. 
Wreck of the Hesperus, 184. 

Yankee in London, 93. 

Vellotv Violet, 146. 

Young Goodman Brown, 220» 

Zenobia, 172. 
Zophiel, 172. 



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